


Last Chance

by AmyPond45



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: AU with non-au elements, Alternate Realities, Angel Jeff, Angel Jensen, Angst with a Happy Ending, Interspecies Romance, M/M, alternate timestreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyPond45/pseuds/AmyPond45
Summary: Jared's life is a mess. Jensen is the guardian angel who answers his prayer for help. Only problem is, it's not the first time, and it's entirely possible Jensen's responsible for messing Jared's life up in the first place. Fortunately, there's a solution, although it means breaking practically every heavenly law. Fortunately, Jensen's a rule-breaker.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All hail to the fabulous art prompt by [amberdreams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams). Be sure to visit her art post [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8838094) and leave some love!
> 
> This story was created for the [2016 J2Reversebang](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/J2_ReverseBang). Many thanks to the mods of that challenge! Thanks also to [laughablelament](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughableLament/pseuds/LaughableLament) for her great beta work.

"You don't want to do that."

Jared's on the edge of the bridge, already on the other side of the railing, ready to drop into space and maybe hit the water or the rocks hard enough to black out. It doesn't really matter. All he can think about right now is stopping the pain.

But suddenly there's this guy, standing on the bridge a couple of feet away, and it throws Jared off because this bridge was deserted when he got here. It's closed for fucking repairs, for God's sake, and it's out in the middle of nowhere and Jared's been here for almost an hour with nobody else so much as driving by and nothing but the sound of the wind and water crashing against the rocks below...

"What?" he turns his head, catches a glimpse of the guy. He's wearing jeans and work-boots, a simple black jacket over a collared shirt – working man's costume.

But even in the dark, his face is – well, it's _glowing,_ for fuck's sake. The man is pale, with vivid green eyes and perfect features and Jared can see every freckle, plain as day.

Jared glances down at the water, then back at the guy again because he can't look away, he has to see that face again because – it must be a trick of the moonlight. Except when Jared glances up at the sky, it's full of clouds. No moon.

"I said, you don't want to do that."

The man has a deep, soothing voice with a hint of gravel, a touch of honey, and Jared definitely wants to hear him speak again, could almost give up his plan just to listen to the guy's voice.

But no. No way is he letting some gorgeous stranger with a purring voice distract him from what he needs. Jared needs the darkness, the silence, he needs an end to the agony. This is what he wants. He's planned this, picked this place weeks ago, and now spent an hour working himself up to it, making his brain work through the problem. It's the only way.

"There's always another way," the stranger says, and Jared shoots another look at him.

He really is beautiful. If Jared had met him a month ago...

"How do you know?" Jared knows he should ignore the man, get on with his plan, although he's feeling a twinge of guilt now because this guy is going to watch as Jared does what he has to do, and that's not something Jared would wish on his worst enemies.

"Because," the man shrugs. "There always is. This is never the answer."

"You really shouldn't be here," Jared says.

"Oh, I think I should," the man says, taking a step closer.

Jared puts a hand up, starts to lose his balance and grabs hold of the railing instead.

"No, you really shouldn't," he insists, and now there are tears in his eyes, damn it. He thought he was done with that. "You shouldn't have to watch this. It's – it's not your fault. It's got nothing to do with you."

"That's where you're wrong," the man says, taking another step. "It's got everything to do with me. That's why I'm here."

"Don't come any closer!" Jared warns. "You can't stop me! This is what I want!"

"I'm sorry, Jared," the man says softly, and Jared looks up sharply, momentarily thrown by the man's use of his name. "I'm afraid it isn't. At all."

"How do you – "

And that's all it takes. Jared slips, scrambles to grab hold of the railing in a last-ditch effort to catch himself, but it's no use.

 _I meant to do this on my own terms, damn it!_ he screams inside his head at the man and at the world as he's suddenly falling, flailing wildly as his body struggles for survival even as his mind knows it's all over.

There's nothing left but the rocks and the cold, dark water, rushing up to meet him as he falls faster and faster, wind rushing past his ears, making his eyes tear. All he can hope for is that he'll lose consciousness before impact.

The last thing Jared sees is the beautiful man standing on the edge of the bridge, staring down at him with his jaw clenched in an expression at once determined and sorrowful, like he's the one who's just decided to end his life as he knows it.

And the weird thing is, Jared could have sworn he saw the shadow of massive feathered wings rise up behind the man, as if he's about to take flight.

Then Jared feels a jolt as he lands hard and the world goes dark.

**//**//**

 

**_Six Months Ago:_ **

When he thinks back on it, Jared can pinpoint the exact moment his life began to fall apart. On September 13, 2005 he was a twenty-three-year-old college senior finishing up a liberal arts degree with short-term plans to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He'd agreed to his parents' terms to give it two years, after which he promised to get a master's degree in teaching and follow his mother into the classroom.

He'd already given the acting bug a chance with a year away from school before college, which was why he was a year older than most of his classmates, and the experience had toughened him and given him confidence. He knew that making it as an actor was a crapshoot at best, but he'd been in love with the stage since he was four years old, and he was lucky enough to have parents who believed their children should pursue their dreams, up to a reasonable limit, so Jared was pumped to get started.

But shit happens, as Jared learned on September 13, the day he was called out of class and met by a plain-clothed police detective who explained that his parents and little sister had all just died in a car accident. Was there someone Jared could go to?

"No, it's just us," Jared answered perfunctorily as the walls of his world came crashing down around him. Jared's older brother had died in a hunting accident as a teenager, the defining tragedy of his life up to this moment.

He gave his permission to some of his mother's friends to help plan the funerals, then left school the next day to go home for the last time. The next few weeks were a blur of donated casseroles, lawyers, life insurance settlements and real-estate brokers. After clearing out and selling his parents' house there was barely enough left for Jared to put a deposit down on an apartment. So Jared took his dad's old Ford pick-up truck, luckily all paid for, and drove away from San Antonio for the last time, headed to Los Angeles to pursue his dream.

It was what his mother would want, he told himself as he drove, hours alone in his Dad's pick-up truck giving him plenty of time to think. He couldn't go back to school even if he could afford the tuition payments on his own. There were too many concerned friends there, and he needed a clean break. Time to put the past behind him and look forward to a new future, a new life.

Within a month he'd run out of money. Within two months he was on the street, cashing in on the few friendships he'd made standing around at auditions, making enough money as a dish-washer and busboy to eat once in a while. He'd lost weight, which made him look younger, so he tried out for anything that came up, losing days away from work being an extra on various TV shows just for the meager earnings and hot meals.

He got close sometimes, rushing into call-back auditions with a pounding heart and renewed hope only to be rejected, passed over yet again by some young, fresh-faced kid with more experience working in TV or film. It was a constant catch-22, Jared's lack of experience of the kind producers and agents wanted. He couldn't get jobs because he hadn't done those kinds of jobs, didn't have his Equity card because he couldn't get cast in an Equity production.

The day he accepted an offer from a producer of adult TV programming was not a good day.

Jared told himself it was work. It was just work. It put food on the table and allowed him to collect enough for a down-payment on an apartment. He would do it for six months, he told himself, enough to get back on his feet and save enough so he could start auditioning for legit parts again.

The irony that the adult film industry wanted him for roles he couldn't get in non-adult programming was not lost on Jared. He played high-school jocks, pizza-delivery boys, a college kid going door-to-door to demonstrate vacuum cleaners to lonely housewives. Okay, those last two were total cliches, but. The writing was terrible, of course, but he was working with some of the hottest names in adult films, and he couldn't say he really minded having sex with such beautiful women as Genevieve Cortese and Danneel Harris. Getting paid to do it was only the icing on the cake. Sure, it was humiliating once in a while, and sometimes it was just plain boring. But these people were professionals. They knew what they were doing and they did it well. After a month or so Jared decided that becoming a porn stud wasn't the worst decision he'd ever made after all.

Then came the day that Sebastian Roché, the producer and director, sold Jared's contract to another filmmaker.

"It's the way this business works, Jared," Sebastian explained when he took Jared aside. It was the middle of a long day of filming, and Jared was nearly naked, had gotten used to walking around with just a pair of boxers or a towel around his waist between scenes while he waited. The women were even bolder. They undressed as soon as they got to work and stayed nude all day, just letting it hang out between costume changes, which weren't very frequent.

Jared wasn't quite there yet. He still maintained a modicum of modesty, plus it was damned uncomfortable to let his unusually-sized dick hang free between scenes. He was too aware of the eyes of the crew and male cast members, and although he was doing fine in front of the camera, somehow being watched off-camera was still a little disconcerting, still made him a little self-conscious.

"Mark just wants to borrow you for a few months," Sebastian went on. "He's watched you perform, and he thinks you'd be perfect for some of his projects."

"Mark Pellegrino?" Jared was surprised. "Doesn't be make gay porn?"

Sebastian smiled, and that look alone should have tipped Jared off that something about this wasn't quite right.

"You'll be great," Sebastian assured him. "Perfect, in fact, for what he has in mind."

And that really should have creeped Jared way the hell out.

The next day when Jared reported to work, Mark was there with a new crew and two muscled, tattooed dudes who sized Jared up like he was a fine cut of beef. The rest of the crew had cleared the set except for a lone cameraman who Jared didn't recognize.

"This is Buck," Mark introduced one of the men, then gestured to the other. "And this is Irv. They work together."

"Always," agreed Buck. Irv smiled and cracked his knuckles, and Jared felt his stomach sink. None of this looked good. At all.

"So for this first piece, we need you to play a virgin college student," Mark explained. "Buck and Irv have picked you up in a bar and brought you back here, to this motel. You've never had gay sex before."

Jared stared at him, horrified. "No, I haven't," he agreed as panic rushed through his veins and sweat dampened his palms and the back of his neck. "I really never have. For real."

"Ah," Mark nodded, folding one arm in front of his chest and resting his chin on his other hand. "Then you won't even have to act, will you?"

Jared's mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Irv and Buck were watching him with smiles that were almost feral, and Jared was reminded of hungry wolves.

"You can't – You can't be serious," he stammered as Buck and Irv moved toward him, circling. "I can't do that. I'm not – I don't swing that way.. I'm not gay."

"No," Mark agreed. "You're bi. You just don't know it yet. Any more questions?"

Jared finally found his voice, pulled himself up to his full height as he put his hands up in front of himself in the universal gesture to stop and back off.

"Wait," he demanded. "This is crazy. I can't do this."

"Why?" Mark shook his head. "What's the problem? Do you need drugs? A fluffer or two?"

"No!" Jared snorted out a laugh of disbelief. "I can't do this because I just can't, okay? This is a no-go for me. I'm drawing the line here."

"Why?" Mark seemed genuinely surprised, although the smirk on his face gave him away. "Is it because there's two of them? Would it be easier if there was just one to start?"

"No!" Jared exploded, angry now because Mark seemed to be taunting him. "I'm not doing this. It isn't what I signed up for!"

"Oh, see, that's where you're wrong, Jared," Mark smiled, but his eyes were cold. "I paid for you. You're mine now. You'll do what I say because you owe me money, and I always collect my debts. Always."

Jared could feel the ground shifting under his feet. He could feel his chest rise and fall as he started to hyperventilate. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be real.

"I'll go to the police," he gasped out. "You can't make me do this."

"You're a porn actor, Jared," Mark reminded him. "That's as good as a prostitute to them. Scum of the earth. You think they're going to take your word over mine? I'm a respected businessman. Pillar of the community. I give money to charity."

Mark took a step closer, and Jared physically recoiled. Every bone in his body rebelled against the things Mark was saying, even while he knew they were true. Jared had done this to himself. He'd gone down this road of his own volition, and this was where it had led him. He was trapped.

"Hey, it's not that bad," Mark purred. He seemed to read the defeat in Jared's face. "The pay's good. The market for this stuff is growing, especially among single straight women. You'd be surprised at the number of women who subscribe to our channels. You get good at this, you'll be a star in no time."

Jared felt tears smarting at the backs of his eyes. He was certain he would never get used to this. Ever.

"Look, we want you to enjoy it, obviously," Mark seemed to soften now that he was sure of Jared's cooperation. "Why don't we start with something a little more romantic, huh? Nice quiet dinner, maybe some dancing, a little walk in the moonlight? Sound better?"

Jared blinked back tears as Mark pulled out his phone to make a call, and within minutes Buck and Irv had been replaced by a clean-cut young man in jeans and a tee-shirt, a casual jacket hanging off his broad shoulders.

"Jared, meet Eric," Mark introduced the young man. "Your date. A blind date, set up by your girlfriend at the office where you intern because she wants you to be happy. She's a good friend, and she sees that you're probably gay, even if you haven't admitted it to yourself yet. Eric's going to take you to dinner, then back to his apartment. Okay? Are we good? Everybody having fun now?"

Jared wasn't, actually. But Eric Johnson was a pro. Once he realized it was Jared's first time having sex on camera with a guy, he convinced Mark to let them take a break, get to know each other first. Build the trust that Jared would need to allow this to happen.

"Okay, but I need you both back here tomorrow morning, nine a.m. sharp." Mark admonished. "And Jared needs to be ready to film that first time like it's the real thing."

Eric had a nice car. He wore nice clothes, and he knew where to take Jared to eat and walk on the beach. He had an easy, comfortable way about him that put Jared at ease, and even though he knew what was coming, Jared was almost able to forget about his contract with Mark Pellegrino. He could almost believe he hadn't backed himself into a corner and couldn't get out.

But he had. Eric had a nice apartment, and when he assured Jared that he was welcome to stay the night, Jared understood this was all the training he could expect. Even though Eric took things slow that night, explained gay sex as patiently as possible as he guided Jared through the mechanics with lots of lube and encouragement, it was still painful and humiliating. He did his best to imagine it was Genevieve or Danneel sucking his dick, penetrating him with a dildo.

But of course it wasn't. And no matter how Eric kissed and caressed and whispered soothing words, Jared couldn't shake the feeling of being used. He understood that if he did this job well, he could end up with nice things, like Eric had. And if he thought about this as another acting job, as just a role or a series of roles in which he had to pretend he was into guys, he could make himself do it, even if it never felt as comfortable as having sex with women.

But when he lay in bed with Eric's arm draped over his hip later that night, Jared's body was flooded with a despair deeper than any he'd ever known. He yearned for his parents, his sister, his friends back home in San Antonio. He was filled with homesickness and gut-wrenching loneliness. He was sure this path led nowhere good. He could see himself taking drugs now, something he'd avoided up to this point but which he now knew he would need if he was to survive this. And starting down the road to addiction was something he had promised himself he would never do. It was the line in his mind that he had drawn from the day his family died.

Heavy-limbed and bone-weary, Jared pulled himself out of bed and into the bathroom, turning on the shower as hot as it would go, leaving the lights off so he wouldn't wake Eric. He scrubbed until his skin was raw, then toweled off and wrapped the towel around his waist, standing in front of the mirror in the moonlight, just trying to center himself. He was still thinner than his usual self, still looked younger than his twenty-three years. There was a vulnerability about him, despite his height, and he could see why Pellegrino had wanted him. The gangly boy he had been was being replaced by something older and harder. Jared could almost see the outline of the muscular body he would have in a few months, after the work-out schedule Mark had planned for him. His face would lose its baby-fat and harden. His chiseled cheek-bones would become sharper and higher, giving his slanted eyes a calculating shrewdness that bordered on malevolent.

Jared saw himself a year from now, almost as if he were having a vision of his own future, glaring back at him from the mirror, strong jaw tensed in anger, body a wound-tight killing machine. Deadly.

Within a year, Jared would be luring younger men into Pellegrino's business. He would be seducing and conditioning them, just as Eric was doing for Jared.

"Oh no," Jared breathed, feeling his knees weakening. "Oh God, no. Please, no."

Jared grabbed the edge of the counter, just to keep from falling, as the truth of his insight whirled around him, the horror of his situation crashing down in the tiny bathroom. Pellegrino owned him now, and Jared had no doubt the man would send thugs after him if he tried to escape, would beat Jared into submission if he had to. Or worse.

He wasn't sure why he fell to his knees on the little soft rug in the bathroom that night. He wasn't even sure he knew what he was doing when he whispered to a God he didn't believe in. Praying hadn't worked for him before, all those years ago when his brother had died and Jared begged God to bring him back, to take Jared instead.

Praying hadn't worked before, and Jared didn't expect it to work this time. It was more an expression of his utter desperation than any real plea for celestial intervention. Jared understood now that his life was cursed, that every decision he had made over the past few months had been leading him deeper and deeper into Hell.

He was beginning to think there was only one thing he could do to stop it.


	2. Chapter 2

**_JENSEN:_ **

"Come on, Jeff," Jensen pleads. "This kid needs me."

The two angels stand quietly in a corner of the bedroom, unseen by Jared as the young man returns from the bathroom, drying tears from his cheeks as he gazes down at the sleeping form on the bed. Jensen can hear his prayer as clearly as if Jared was speaking aloud.

"Yeah, like he needed you the first time," Jeff answers, shaking his head. "See how well that worked out."

Jensen frowns. "That was my first assignment," he reminds his mentor. "Before I knew what I was doing."

"You do realize he's thinking about killing himself," Jeff says darkly. "If he goes through with it, you can't interfere."

Jensen feels a tingle of fear go up his spine, but he manages a stiff nod. Whatever it takes, whatever promises he has to make to get close to Jared again, it'll be worth it.

"I know," he says, taking a deep breath to steady himself. Being this close to Jared always throws him off. He doesn't know how he's managed to stay away as long as he has. "I can handle it."

He's not sure about that, to be honest. The idea of Jared going through with his plan is terrifying to Jensen. He's only stayed away from Jared as long as he has because he knew Jared was still out there in the world, still alive and breathing. As long as there was the possibility that Jared might pray for him again, as he had all those years ago after his brother's death, Jensen could leave him alone. Jensen could wait.

But if Jared really tried to kill himself, Jensen's not sure he could stand it. He's pretty sure he would do anything in his power to stop it, as a matter of fact.

But now Jared's prayed for him again. Now Jensen's got a last chance to save Jared before he does something stupid.

And maybe, if he plays his cards right, Jensen's got a chance to set right the mess he made seven years ago. The mess he created by appearing to the distraught sixteen-year-old on that fateful night when Jared kneeled by his bed, praying to whoever would listen to bring his brother back.

**//**//**

**Seven Years Ago: May, 1999**

"It doesn't work that way, you know," Jensen said quietly.

Jared startled, whirled around so quickly he fell on his ass, staring up at Jensen with big, red-rimmed eyes. His cheeks were streaked with tears, his nose was red and runny, and Jensen had to choke back a gasp because he'd never seen anything so beautiful.

"Who – who are you?" Jared demanded, his voice hitched and broken from crying. "What are you doing in my room?"

Jensen smiled gently and slipped to his knees on the worn shag carpet, his eyes never leaving Jared's face.

"I'm your guardian angel," he said softly. "You prayed for me."

Jared's eyes widened even further and he crawled backwards, crab-like, till his back was up against the side of the bed.

"No you're not," he protested weakly. "That's impossible. I don't have a guardian angel."

"Yes, you do, Jared," Jensen assured him. "Everyone does. You just didn't know it."

"No way," Jared shook his head. "If I have a guardian angel, he never would have let my brother die."

"I don't know about your brother, Jared," Jensen said. "I'm not his angel. I'm yours."

"No you're not," Jared said again. "Guardian angels are supposed to keep bad things from happening. And in case you didn't notice, something really really bad just happened to me. So if you're my guardian angel, I'd say you're doing a damn shitty job."

Jensen felt like he'd been kicked in the gut, which didn't make any sense since technically he didn't have a gut. Or a body at all. But somehow, making himself visible to Jared had given him a physical form that could register emotional pain, and he was definitely feeling that now.

Along with an overwhelming need to touch Jared, which also made no sense. The sixteen-year-old boy on the floor in front of him was definitely pretty, in a young-boy human kind of way. But it was his soul that took Jensen's breath away. It shone around the boy like an aura of pure light, brighter than anything Jensen had seen outside of Heaven. It didn't matter than this was Jensen's first job on Earth, his first time face-to-face with a human charge, and he didn't really have anything to compare this to. Jensen was just sure Jared's soul was the purest soul on Earth.

How could one human boy be this beautiful, inside and out? And how was Jensen not expected to fall in love with him?

"I'm sorry," Jensen said, finally tearing his eyes off Jared's face to stare down at his hands, lying loose in his lap. "It's my first job. I guess I'm not very good at it yet."

Jensen could hear Jared suck in a breath, then shift a little as he crawled forward, apparently drawn to Jensen despite himself. Jensen looked up again, startled, when Jared touched Jensen's cheek; the boy was staring at Jensen with a look of wonder in his multi-colored eyes from only a foot away, and for a moment all Jensen could do was stare back, mesmerized.

"You're real," Jared whispered after a moment, then he pulled his hand back as he seemed to realize what he was doing. "You feel human."

"We take human form when we need to," Jensen explained. "It makes it easier for our charges to trust us."

"So you don't always look like this?" Jared asked.

"I appear to you in a form you might find most pleasing," Jensen said, then quickly looked away because his face was heating up under Jared's gaze. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and sucked on it, then let it go with a pop, glancing up again as Jared sucked in another breath.

Jared was staring at Jensen's mouth, his lips parted and eyes suddenly gone dark in a way that made Jensen's heart pound.

"How – how old are you?" Jared asked, his voice lower than it had been a moment before.

"I'm very old, Jared," Jensen said, trying to keep his voice steady in the midst of the influx of human emotions. "But in this body I'm sixteen, just like you."

"So you've been watching over me all my life?" Jared asked.

Jensen shook his head. "No," he admitted. "We only come when you call us. When you pray for us."

"And you can bring my brother back?"

"No, Jared," Jensen shook his head, genuinely sorry for the grief-stricken boy. "No one can do that. All I can do is offer comfort in your hour of need, as corny as it sounds."

Jared grinned, and it was like sunshine breaking through clouds.

"You're not really very good at this at all, are you?" he teased, and Jensen couldn't help smiling. The fact was, the longer he maintained this human form, the more his angelic self receded, taking with it the lists of rules and regulations and ways of expressing himself that Jensen had been taught.

Which wasn't such a bad thing, really, when he stopped to think about it.

"Guess not," Jensen agreed.

"So now that you're here, how long will you stay?"

Gazing into Jared's eyes, reading the hope and hurt there, the possibility that Jensen could really make a difference by helping to heal this boy's pain, by easing his grief just a little, Jensen couldn't remember why he should ever do anything but stay right where he was, with Jared, for as long as Jared needed him.

"However long it takes," he answered, and the look of relief in Jared's eyes was everything he never knew he needed.

They sat up and talked together for most of the night, discussing everything from Heaven to high school. Jared rambled on about his friends, his favorite books and sports, his love of drama and speech clubs. He asked questions about Heaven and angels, particularly about any superpowers they might possess, and Jensen answered as truthfully as he could, which was against the rules, of course. Jared seemed delighted by Jensen's tendency to break rules, and Jensen regaled him with stories of the antics and pranks he had committed. Jensen's misbehavior had resulted in his getting demoted time and time again, and he'd still be sitting in some filing office in Heaven if it wasn't for Jeff, who had only recently taken over the Guardian Angel Division in Heaven. Jeff had seen something in the errant angel that others had not, and it was on Jeff's recommendation that Jensen had finally been given the chance to work in the GAD, as it was referred to among the other angels.

"Jeff believes in me," Jensen explained as Jared listened raptly. "He's giving me a chance to prove myself here, and I intend to make him proud, if I can figure out what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Well, if my recommendation counts for anything, I'd give you at least a star-and-a-half for effort," Jared quipped.

"Out of five?" Jensen widened his eyes. "Only a star-and-a-half out of five? For effort? Are you kidding me?"

"Out of ten," Jared corrected, grinning wildly as Jensen threw a pillow at him. "Ooh, rookie move," he exclaimed as he grabbed the other end of the pillow, pushing it back at Jensen and following it with his weight, effectively wrestling Jensen to the ground with the pillow between them.

Jensen stopped struggling as soon as he felt himself pinned under Jared, keenly aware of Jared's bony knees and hips, the bird-like bones of his ribcage pressed against him as they panted and gasped for breath through their laughter.

Jensen lay on his back and stared up at Jared, studying him, trying to understand his own intense feelings. Jared's eyes were twinkling, his cheeks were flushed, and his hair was mussed in such a way that Jensen wanted to run his fingers through it but knew he didn't dare. Jared lay on top of Jensen just a moment too long, and when his eyes dropped to Jensen's mouth Jensen licked his lips almost unconsciously, making Jared blush furiously and sit back, letting him go without even being asked.

"I should try to get some sleep," Jared said, keeping his eyes down, and Jensen was sure now that he had felt the outline of Jared's erection through the thin cotton of his pajamas. Jensen was wearing only a tee-shirt and sweatpants himself, so he should know. "Do you sleep?"

"Not usually," Jensen admitted. "But I can. Do you want me to stay while you sleep?"

Jared raised his eyes to Jensen again, and the naked emotion there nearly took his breath away. It wasn't exactly sexual, although that was undoubtedly part of it. Jared was intensely attracted, and Jensen had already established that the feeling was mutual, which should not have been happening. Getting personally involved with a charge was forbidden.

"Will you be here when I wake up?" Jared asked, plaintive.

"I can be," Jensen nodded. "I can stay as long as you need me, although your parents might think it's a little weird if you never leave your bedroom."

"Can you – can you come to school with me?" Jared asked, and Jensen smiled.

"I can," Jensen said. "Although you're the only one who can see me."

"Okay," Jared grinned. "I can live with that."

Jensen had the distinct impression Jared was relieved that he was the only one who could see Jensen, and Jensen thought there was something a little possessive in that relief, which Jensen didn't mind. Belonging to Jared, and only to Jared, didn't seem like a bad thing at all.

Jensen was in trouble and he knew it, but he was already too in love to care.

 

**//**//**

 

**February, 2006:**

Back in the present, Jared whimpers in his sleep. It's been nearly a month since he prayed, and he's taking sleeping pills almost every night. He takes amphetamines to get himself going in the morning, anxiety medication and anti-depressants to get through the day. Sometimes he drinks, but only if he runs out of the sleeping pills. His life is spinning out of control, and the only time he feels safe is in his dreams, none of which he can remember in the morning.

But the dreams are comforting. Jensen can feel it when he curls around Jared's sleeping form at night, holds him close as Jared's mind takes him into the past, to that long-ago spring when he first fell in love with the green-eyed boy who claimed to be his guardian angel.

Jared doesn't remember, of course. Or if he does, he tells himself it was some kind of fantasy, a day-dream he conjured to help him endure the grief of his brother's death.

Jensen kisses the back of Jared's neck, breathes in the sweat-soaked skin and the citrus-and-sweat smell of his long, silky hair. Jensen's been good. He learned his lesson the first time and he's remaining invisible, barely tangible so that all Jared can feel is the vague sensation of someone's arms around him as he sleeps. He relaxes into Jensen and sighs, so Jensen knows it's helping, and that's all he can hope for. Jared's too far gone now, his life has careened too far off the reservation, and this is all Jensen can do. This is all Jensen gets to have now.

It's all he should have done in the first place, but he didn't know better. He got too involved. Heaven demoted him back to the filing room after that first stint as a guardian angel, only to let him out again so he could answer the prayers of the very old and the very young, appearing to them in human form only as a last resort, only as a final comfort as their lives were ending.

Of course he couldn't help trying to save the kids. It wasn't in him not to try. So he got himself demoted again, then allowed to answer the prayers of only the oldest and most close-to-death, helping to ease their way into the afterlife.

Until Jared prayed again.

Jensen promises himself he won't fuck this up, he won't let Jeff down this time. He knows Jeff has put himself on the line for him, allowing him to go back to Jared only under the strictest pledge that he will follow the rules this time, that he won't mess this up again. 

But it's Jared. Jensen forgot how being near Jared makes him lose all sense of certitude and conviction. He can't remember why he ever promised to stay away. Jared's soul is like a magnet specially set to attract only Jensen, to disrupt time and space and distort every other magnetic field. Nothing makes sense except being with Jared, and as it becomes increasingly clear that he's planning to end his life, Jensen becomes more focused on a way to prevent that from happening.


	3. Chapter 3

**May, 1999:**

Jensen walked Jared to school the next day, waited for him after drama club and walked him home again. They locked themselves up in Jared's room listening to Jared's grunge music while Jared did his homework, then Jensen nearly gave Jared a heart-attack by following him downstairs for dinner.

Neither Jared's parents nor his little sister noticed that Jensen was in the room, and after a few minutes Jared relaxed, gave Jensen the finger under the table where only he could see, then grinned like a crazy person when Jensen blushed.

Back upstairs in Jared's bedroom again, Jared started undressing for bed and stopped himself.

"Do you mind?" he asked, and Jensen shrugged and turned his back while Jared took his pants off, slipping into a tee-shirt and pajama bottoms instead.

They stayed up half the night talking again, and this time Jensen lay down on the spare bed, the one that used to be Jared's brother's bed. They lay talking and staring at each other, sometimes letting the silences stretch out until one of them licked his lips and the other other one closed his eyes because it was too much, this intimacy, this closeness with a stranger.

"It's like having an invisible friend," Jared said at one point when the conversation had dwindled to non sequiturs and acquiescent grunts. "Like when I was little."

"You had an invisible friend when you were little?" Jensen asked, genuinely curious.

Jared smiled that gorgeous, lazy grin of his and said nothing for a moment. Then, "You jealous?"

"Nah," Jensen shook his head. "Angels trump invisible friends any day. We're real."

"Riiiiiiight," Jared teased, and Jensen frowned.

"Shut up," he growled, pretending to take offense. "We _are."_

Jared grinned at him for another moment, then turned serious.

"You're like the bestest friend I ever had," he said.

"Yeah?" Jensen raised an eyebrow. "You've had a few of those, I'm guessin'?"

"A ton," Jared nodded. "I'm like a best-friend magnet. Everybody loves me."

"Is that right?" Jensen wasn't too sure he liked that idea. He'd rather be Jared's _only_ best friend.

As soon as the thought left his mind, Jensen felt a cool breeze waft through the room, making him shiver. Jared noticed it too, pulled the blanket up to his chin.

"Mom's got the A/C cranked tonight," he commented. "It's getting hot in here."

"You could say that," Jensen agreed and was rewarded by a huff of breath from Jared, which is how he knew Jared caught his innuendo.

A comfortable if sexually-charged silence fell again, and after a couple of minutes Jensen assumed Jared had fallen asleep, until he heard Jared draw in a deep breath.

"I wish you could stay with me forever," Jared said, sounding so young and insecure Jensen immediately wanted to hug him.

"Me, too," he said instead, honestly.

He watched as Jared stared at him another minute, then turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling while Jensen got drunk on the sight of his profile, the little ski-jump nose and long neck making Jensen's body tremble like a tuning fork, tuned only to Jared's frequency.

Then Jared smiled, shattering the illusion, making him look like an ordinary boy again as he turned his head toward Jensen.

"Goodnight, Jensen," he murmured. He turned away onto his other side, his back to Jensen this time, huddled around his pillow like it was a living person.

Jensen wished it was him. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't help wishing it.

**//**//**

**March, 2006:**

Jared's getting worse. He mumbles in his sleep now, angry, unintelligible mumbles followed by softer, pleading mumbles that sound like another person, like he's arguing with someone in his dreams.

Jensen knows it's against all the rules ever created, to go into someone's dreams, but he does it anyway. He can't help it. It's a violation, he knows. He's been told numerous times, and it consumes him with guilt.

But this is Jared, and he needs to know. God help him, he needs to know if Jared remembers.

At first, there's nothing but a thick, grey fog. Mist, really. It's cold and clammy and carries the far-off sounds of someone crying.

Jared.

"Jay?" Jensen steps forward, into the center of the fog, willing it to part as he squints, sure Jared's in here somewhere.

Another step, then another, and a dark shape comes into focus. Tall but stooped, clothed in black from head to toe, his back turned to Jensen, long hair flopping listlessly over the edges of his coat-collar.

Jared.

"Jay? Hey, buddy. It's me," Jensen calls softly.

Jared's shoulders tense and his head snaps up, which is how Jensen knows he hears him.

"Hey, Jared," Jensen tries again. "It's okay, sweetheart. I'm here."

Jared hesitates, like he's considering whether to believe his own ears. Like he's unsure whether to trust what he's hearing.

"Jensen?"

Jared turns, slow and unsteady, like he's afraid if he tries to look at Jensen he'll disappear.

"Yeah, buddy, it's really me," Jensen says. "I'm really here."

Jensen smiles as Jared sees him, tries to convey the confidence and reassurance he doesn't quite feel as Jared's lips part and his eyes fill with tears.

"Jensen," Jared breathes, gazing at him with a look of loss and longing that makes Jensen's chest hurt. "Where ya been? Huh? Where ya been, Jen?"

Jensen drops his eyes, humiliated and wracked with guilt. Where _has_ he been? What could have been more important that this? What could ever be more important than being with Jared, especially when Jared needed him? What the ever-lovin-hell?!

"Yeah," he breathes, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, then shoving them under his armpits when they don't fit. Nothing fits. Nothing feels right, that's the whole damn problem. "I shouldn't be here."

Jared's mouth drops open, and his tortured expression is almost more than Jensen can bear.

"What are you talking about?" Jared clenches his fists as tears of frustration roll down his cheeks. "You said you'd stay with me, Jen. You promised. You said you'd stay as long as I needed you, remember? Well, I need you, Jensen! I really, really need you!"

Jensen raises his eyes to Jared's, and it's like time falls away, like they're back in that special place out back of Jared's house, where the trees shade them from the road and the grass is green and cool under their bare backs as they lie next to the water, pledging their undying love for each other. Promising to be together, forever.

"I know," Jensen whispers, shaken and miserable. "I know, Jare. I was wrong. I made a mistake. I can't – "

"You can't what, Jensen?" Jared demands.

"I can't stay here. I can't – I can't do this," Jensen says, and the dream fades.

**//**//**

**May, 1999:**

It was the end of the week. They'd only had a week, altogether.

It seemed longer, and when Jensen thought back about it later it felt like an entire lifetime. Like he and Jared had always been together.

"Young love," Jeff explained as Jensen described his feelings for Jared, how consumed he was by them. "It's the human body you're occupying. That's normal for a sixteen-year-old boy. It feels very intense at the time, but it will fade. When you come back to Heaven, you'll forget all about Jared. And of course he'll forget about you as soon as you leave him."

Jensen felt a wrenching in his gut that wouldn't quit, and his eyes filled with tears. He knew this was the way it would end. He'd known it before he'd even taken this assignment. But he hadn't realized just how painful it would be. Jeff had tried to warn him, but he didn't believe it. He'd been too excited to get the job in the first place.

Now he sat outside Jared's house in the afternoon sunlight, waiting for Jared to come home from school. Waiting to say goodbye.

It was a Friday, so Jared didn't have school the next day. They stripped down to their boxers and jumped into the pool, splashing each other and laughing until Jensen dove down under the water and grabbed Jared's long legs and pulled him down. They swam circles around each other until they ran out of air, then broke through the surface of the water, gasping and laughing. Jared jumped Jensen, pushing him under again, and Jensen grabbed Jared's slippery arms, pulling him under with him. They held onto each other as they wrestled, rolling around under the water until they were forced to come up for air again. This time Jensen pulled himself up over the side of the pool and rolled onto the grass, and Jared joined him a moment later, flopping on top of Jensen like a beached dolphin, all wet limbs and slippery skin.

"Get off me!" Jensen half-complained, wedging his hands under Jared's shoulders so he could push.

Jared wrapped his arms around Jensen and rolled with him so that now Jensen was on top, slotted between Jared's spread legs. Their bodies were pressed together from chest to hip, the sun on Jensen's back drying him. Jared's arms felt nice, and Jensen stopped struggling and lay looking down into Jared's face, memorizing every feature. Jared stared up at him, blinking against the sunlight shining behind Jensen's head. Then he moved one hand and Jensen held his breath as Jared plucked an eyelash off Jensen's cheek with his thumb and forefinger.

"You have so many," Jared shrugged a little. "I guess you won't miss one or two."

Jensen smiled. "Guess not," he agreed, then dipped his head and kissed Jared, square on the mouth.

It was soft and dry and barely there, really, but when he lifted his head again Jared was staring at him like he'd just sprouted horns. Or wings. Like he was some kind of miracle.

Then Jared pushed up and rolled them so that Jensen was under him again, staring up as Jared tilted his head, concentrating on his angle of attack as he stared at Jensen's mouth. He took Jensen's head in his big hands and lowered his mouth to Jensen's, and as Jared's face came closer Jensen closed his eyes.

Jared's mouth was soft, and his lips were parted, so that when they moved on Jensen's they parted Jensen's lips too. He felt the tip of Jared's tongue dart out to touch his bottom lip and Jensen let his own tongue protrude just a little. When their tongues touched Jensen felt heat rush down his body to his dick and a tingle like electricity where their mouths met and Jared gasped, pulling back.

"Holy shit!" Jared said. "Did you feel that?"

"Yeah," Jensen gasped. His heart was pounding and his dick was so hard it hurt."That was – "

"Amazing?" Jared suggested, and Jensen nodded, speechless. "Again?"

Jensen nodded again and Jared leaned down to kiss him. This time Jensen let his mouth open a little more, let Jared push his tongue between Jensen's lips. Jared probeD carefully at first, then with more confidence as Jensen met each thrust of his tongue with a swipe of his own.

Their lower bodies ground together almost of their own volition, sending shockwaves of need up Jensen's spine, building too fast toward something Jensen only vaguely understood. Then Jared moaned and their mouths slid apart, Jared's body going rigid as Jensen's orgasm crashed over him, making him see stars.

As he came to, Jensen was aware of Jared breathing into his neck, of the sweat making their chests slide together, of the cooling stickiness in his boxers. He ran his hand up Jared's back, sliding his fingers into Jared's hair, and pressed his lips against Jared's cheek.

"My Jared," he murmured into Jared's ear, and a cool breeze wafted across them, as if Jensen's words had made it true. "Always."

"Huh," Jared half-grunted, half-laughed as he lifted his head, blinking down at Jensen with a dazzled, bewildered look. " _That_ never happened before."

"First time for me, too," Jensen grinned. "First kiss, too."

"No way," Jared shook his head a little, like he was clearing it. "Seriously? Cuz you're good, man. That was – really good."

"So you've kissed someone before?" Jensen felt that now-familiar spark of jealousy again.

"Just girls," Jared raised his eyebrows. "I never kissed a guy before. Never wanted to."

Jensen smiled, feeling more than a little smug. "I guess it's just me, then," he said.

"Yeah," Jared agreed. "Just you. I'm in love with an angel and he's a guy. How weird is that?"

"Are you?" Jensen's breath caught, his heart pounding hard again. "Are you really? Cuz me too. With you."

"Yeah?" Jared slid his hand down the side of Jensen's face, gazing at him with a heavy-lidded, lazy smile that made his dimples show. "Damn, you are so beautiful."

Jensen blushed and shifted uncomfortably under Jared's steady gaze. "Let's wash off in the pool, huh?"

"Yeah," Jared agreed.

Jensen dove in first, shimmying out of his soiled boxers underwater. He surfaced and threw them at Jared, who was standing in the pool a few feet away, busily working his own shorts down his long legs. When Jensen's wet boxers hit him square in the face Jensen laughed.

"Ew, gross!" Jared complained as he pulled the shorts free and dropped them in the water, then took a flying leap toward Jensen, eyes sparkling with revenge. Jensen barely had time to turn away and slip under water before Jared was on him, grabbing his kicking legs and yanking him in, shoving his own boxers over Jensen's face as Jensen struggled to free himself. "There! Eat it! That's right! Taste my jizz, angel!"

Jensen was laughing so hard he almost inhaled the shorts, but luckily for him his skin was too slippery for Jared to hold him long enough. He wiggled free and slipped underwater again, swam between Jared's legs and came up behind him, tickling his ribs and making Jared whoop and splash wildly, then slip to the bottom of the pool. Jensen followed him down, floating above him as Jared stared up, his gaze serious and thoughtful, his long tan limbs moving gracefully in the water, almost as if he were gliding on air. Jensen floated closer as Jared watched, taking in Jensen's naked form from head to toe until Jensen placed his hands on either side of Jared's face and kissed him.

Jared's eyes widened and he jerked away then, pushing off the bottom of the pool with Jensen right behind him. They broke the surface of the water with mutual gasps, filling their lungs as they stared at each other, treading water as Jensen moved closer. When they were close enough Jensen leaned in and pressed Jared's lips with his, tentative at first, sliding his hands and then his arms around Jared's neck, hooking one leg around his waist so they were tangled together as their kisses grew deeper, tasting spit and pool water. Jared moved them through the water until his feet touched the bottom, then his hands slipped down Jensen's back to his ass, holding Jensen securely against him.

It felt like hours passed as they kissed and touched, exploring each other's bodies until their skin began to wrinkle and the sun was throwing long shadows across the pool and grass. When they finally climbed out and retrieved their jeans, slipping them on in silence, neither wanted to leave. Neither wanted to break the spell of this magical afternoon with all of its revelations and discoveries.

They lay side by side on their backs on the grass, pinkie fingers entwined, and stared up at the sky through the leaves of the tree for as long as they dared, and it was Jared who finally broke the silence, Jared who already understood what Jensen couldn't bring himself to say.

"You're leaving," he said, swallowing thickly.

Jensen nodded because he couldn't trust himself to speak.

"Will you be back?"

Jensen hesitated. There were always two answers to that question, because it depended on Jared, but he couldn't tell him that.

"I don't know," Jensen said finally, as truthful as he could be. "Maybe."

Jared sucked in a breath, and Jensen could tell he was trying not to cry.

"I'm gonna forget you," Jared choked out. "Isn't that the way it goes? I'm gonna forget all this like it never happened."

Jensen pushed himself up on one elbow, sliding one hand along Jared's cheek, catching a tear with his thumb.

"It happened," he said, pressing his hand against Jared's chest, over his heart. "Part of you will always know that. Part of me will always be with you."

A sob tore from Jared's chest and tears streamed down his cheeks. He turned his face away like he couldn't bear to look at Jensen.

"When I die someday, will you be there?" he choked out. 

Jensen's chest felt tight, like something had grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed.

"You won't die for a very, very long time, Jared," Jensen assured him, stroking his hair gently.

"But when I do, you'll be there, right?" Jared sobbed, stubbornly refusing to look at him. "In Heaven, or whatever."

"Yeah," Jensen said. "Yeah, I'll be there."

"Promise?" Jared turned his head then, stared up into Jensen's eyes, blinking through his tears. "Promise me, Jen. Promise we'll be together someday. For-fuckin'-ever. Promise!"

"Yeah," Jensen sighed, swallowing back his own tears, unable to lie to this boy even though he knew that once Jared forgot him he'd forget this, too. "Yeah, I promise."

"Okay." Jared took a deep breath, staring at Jensen like he never wanted to stop looking at him, and Jensen knew that feeling, all right. Knew it too well. "Okay."

Jared fell asleep a few minutes later, cradled in Jensen's arms because Jensen was damned if the last thing he saw before he forgot Jensen ever existed wasn't the thing he thought he loved more than anything he'd ever known.

Jeff laid his fingers gently on Jared's forehead and Jensen watched as the little crease between his eyes softened and faded as Jared's memories of Jensen slipped away into oblivion.

"You done good, kid," Jeff said softly as he and Jensen stood watching Jared sleep peacefully in the cool grass. The boy would awaken as if from a dream, his memories wiped but his soul assuaged, his grief lessened.

Jensen had done his job.


	4. Chapter 4

Except he hadn't. He'd changed things, left traces that only gradually became apparent until it was obvious that Jensen had fucked up.

For example, Jared never had any real friendships again. Oh, he still had a few friends, people still gravitated towards him, but no one satisfied him, nothing seemed quite right when he spent time with people. Everyone he met was lacking something, although Jared would never be able to express what that something was. Nevertheless, the former best-friend magnet became more aloof, less attached.

But that wasn't the worst part.

Jared couldn't fall in love. It was as if Jensen had taken that part of him and left him kind of empty inside, incapable of attaching to another human being long enough to create that kind of bond.

Or as if Jared's soul had committed so firmly to Jensen it just couldn't bond with anyone else.

Within a month after his return to Heaven Jensen was demoted to the filing room. Despite Jeff's best efforts, the order from the higher-ups was very clear: Jensen had messed up and would not be allowed back into the GAD for some time, if ever. Period.

"You pledged yourself to him," Jeff explained. "You made promises that no angel should make to a human. It changes them. Now part of his soul belongs to you. He'll pine for something he can't have for the rest of his life."

"Like a curse," Jensen breathed, shocked. "You're saying I've cursed him."

Jeff took a deep breath, shook his head. "You've affected him," he corrected. "You altered his lifeline. I didn't think it was possible, or I would never have let you go in the first place."

"So how do I fix it?" Jensen demanded. "How do I make it right?"

"You don't," Jeff shook his head sadly. "He's been literally touched by an angel. Not something you can fix."

So Jensen watched helplessly from Heaven as Jared's life veered off course in ways neither the angel nor the human could have predicted. Jensen couldn't help keeping an eye on Jared, although he wasn't allowed to go near him. Jensen felt deeply responsible for the young man, whose beautiful soul had given Jensen an understanding of humanity that no other experience could have done. Knowing Jared had probably made Jensen better at his job, had given him more sympathy for the people who prayed for his help.

Of course, Jensen was banned from doing that job again for some time, and when he was finally allowed back into the GAD, Jensen vowed he would never interfere in another human life again.

Then Jared prayed.

**//**//**

**March, 2006:**

"He's going to kill himself," Jensen paces the bedroom floor as Jeff sits on the windowsill watching him, frowning. "I have to stop him."

Jared's passed out on his bed, doped up on sleeping pills and booze again. Jensen's been following him around all week, watching as Jared prepares for his own demise. It's chilling in its sheer precision; Jared has thought through every contingency, left no stone unturned as he settles his affairs, plans the moment of his own death with careful attention to detail. There can be no question of it being his choice; he insists on being in control of his death to the degree that he's lost control of his life, and Jensen can see the sick logic of it in Jared's mind as clearly as if he explained it aloud.

Jared keeps his plans to himself because he doesn't want Mark or his henchmen to stop him, but Jensen reads Jared's mind like a book. It both disturbs and fascinates him that Jared has become so clinical in his thinking. He remembers the passionate boy he fell in love with seven years ago and wonders what happened.

Jensen knows what happened. Which is why he has to fix it.

"You can't," Jeff says now, not without a hint of sadness in his voice. "I'm sorry, Jensen. If Jared goes through with his plan, you can't stop it."

"But it's my fault he's where he is right now!" Jensen protests. "I'm the one that put him in this position! If he'd never met me, none of this would be happening!"

Jeff shakes his head. "You don't know that, Jensen," he says. "You don't know how you affected him. Only that you did. You can't know how things would have been different if you hadn't answered his prayer that night."

"I know it couldn't be worse!" Jensen wails, scrubbing a hand over his face because his vision has suddenly gone blurry. "Great. Now I'm crying. Like that'll help."

Jeff takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. "Angel tears are rare and powerful, Jensen. Don't mock them."

"Not powerful enough to fix this, apparently!"

Jeff says nothing, bites his lower lip and stares at a crack in the hardwood floor as if it's suddenly the most interesting thing he's ever seen.

"What?" Jensen stops pacing. "What is it? Is there something you're not telling me?"

Jeff closes his eyes for a moment, then takes a deep breath and opens them again, glancing at Jared's sleeping form before he answers.

"There is something," he admits slowly. "It's not foolproof, and as far as I know it's never been done successfully. Also, it's extremely illegal, but then so's what you did."

"What?" Jensen asks again. "What do I have to do?" He's ready to die for Jared, if that's what it takes.

As soon as that thought leaves his mind, Jensen knows. He's heard of it, like an angel urban legend, not something he'd ever taken seriously before, but now he's feeling desperate. Hopeful.

"There is a way to reset Jared's lifeline," Jeff says with another deep sigh. "Take you completely out of it, so none of this ever happened."

Jensen swallows as his mouth goes dry suddenly. He feels chills up his spine, and it's not just because he's naked. Angels don't wear clothes because they don't get cold, but the chill he's feeling makes Jensen shiver.

"Okay," he breathes, fighting down the sense of dread curling around him. "What do I have to do?"

'There's no guarantee Jared wouldn't end up right back here anyway," Jeff muses, unable or unwilling to meet Jensen's eyes. "It might all happen this way again, and Jared would end up just as fucked and suicidal as he is right now. We can't know for sure."

"But there's a chance?" Jensen presses. "We could do something that might save him from this? Jeff, you gotta know I'd do anything if that were possible. Anything."

"I know," Jeff raises his eyes, and damn it if they aren't full of tears. "I know that, son. I know you would." His smile is fond and sad and Jensen suddenly realizes that Jeff is the closest thing to a father he's ever had.

"Resetting a human lifeline takes something even more powerful than angel tears," Jeff says, and Jensen nods. "It takes the ultimate sacrifice."

"Okay," Jensen agrees immediately and without hesitation. "I'll do it."

"Jensen." Jeff licks his lips, clears his throat, and rubs the back of his neck. "You don't know what you're saying."

"I don't care," Jensen insists. "I'll do it. Whatever it takes, I'll do it. Just tell me what I have to do."

Jeff shakes his shaggy head, gritting his teeth so his dimples show, and Jensen can see how difficult this is for him, how reluctant he is to pursue this course of action.

"You'll be human, Jensen," Jeff reminds him. "If you give up your angelic existence, you'll lose Heaven forever. You'll live out your life as a human being."

"I don't care!" Jensen says again.

"You won't remember your angelic existence," Jeff goes on. "You'll be born into a human family, live your life never knowing about Heaven or –– or any of it. And that's not all. You may never meet Jared, even if you live your life at the same time. The chances of your paths ever crossing..."

Jensen feels grief welling up in his chest. "If it saves Jared, it'll be worth it," he says, softer now.

Jeff swallows, nods. "I figured you'd say that," he says. "I just wanted to be sure you understood."

He rises to his feet then, wings unfurling behind him as he walks to the bed to gaze down at Jared's sleeping form.

"Little did I know what I was doing when I sent you to him seven years ago," he says softly. "I never imagined losing you."

Jensen moves up beside his friend and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You'll never lose me," he says. "You'll always know where I am."

"That's true, I guess," Jeff smiles sadly.

They stand side-by-side watching Jared sleep for another moment, then something occurs to Jensen.

"When Jared's sixteen and he prays for guidance, will you go to him?" Jensen asks. "Will you be his angel in that other lifeline?"

"I guess I can do that," Jeff nods. "I'm not kissing him, though."

"You better not!" Jensen's eyes widen in mock-horror as a flicker of jealousy rises in his chest.

**//**//**

Jeff explains the ritual. Jared can't be saved before he actually makes his suicide attempt, since he must be allowed to complete this lifeline before it can be reset. There's no doubt this is what Jared wants, and he has every right to make his own choices of his own free will, which is the oldest rule in the book and the only one that is absolutely ironclad.

For Jensen it's the most agonizing pain he's ever experienced, holding Jared's broken body in his arms after he plummets from the bridge. Jensen let himself appear to Jared that one last time, hoping beyond hope that Jared would remember him and that would be enough to make him change his mind.

But of course Jared is too determined to do what he's planned and decided on for so many weeks. There's no recognition in his eyes when he looks at Jensen, only a soft regret that feels like reproach, as if Jared's demanding to know why Jensen hadn't come sooner.

All Jensen can provide is a soft landing. He swoops down as Jared falls and slides under him as he hits the rocks below, ensuring that Jared feels no pain as his body shatters irreparably. Jensen's tears fall freely as he sobs his grief into Jared's broken neck, cradling his head as he gathers Jared's body against him. In death Jared's face is relaxed, relieved at last of all the suffering he's endured over the past few months. His features are still beautiful, and as Jensen lowers his mouth for a final kiss he can almost believe Jared feels it. His lips are still warm, and Jensen kisses them softly as he breathes into Jared's body, sensing rather than seeing Jeff standing over them, reciting the words of the ancient incantation.

_I'm here, my love,_ Jensen whispers silently, sending thoughts of comfort and rest into Jared's mind, as Jensen keeps that promise, at least, made seven years ago on that warm spring day. _I'm here with you, always._

Jensen feels the light before he sees it. He lifts his head as it flows around Jeff, lifting his wings like a breeze, growing brighter as it fills the space around them. It blinds him, and Jensen lifts one arm to shield his eyes so that he can see Jeff one last time, silhouetted against the radiance engulfing him. Jensen clutches Jared's body against him and closes his eyes, burying his face in Jared's neck as a sound like a million tuning forks humming in discordant frequencies grows louder, crowding out all other sound.

The last thing Jensen's aware of is a smell of burning.


	5. Chapter 5

**_JARED: 2005 Reset_ **

The sun beats down as Jared pulls into the last parking space on the studio lot. He's been here before, knows the drill, but he still feels that adrenaline rush of excitement as he climbs out of his SUV and heads toward the office door. He's had a recurring role on _Gilmore Girls_ for five years now, auditioned for dozens of roles in other pilots, but the chance to get the lead in a brand new show is more of a thrill than he's letting himself admit. He's already read for this part half-a-dozen times, knows he's getting close.

_Better not get too excited,_ he tells himself. _Better not read too much into this._

Jared prides himself on being ready for anything. That's the nature of this business, and he has friends whose careers have been made on the basis of one chance, one lucky break. He's also seen friends crash and burn on the same basis. He's been luckier than most so far and he knows better than to go into auditions thinking he's already made it. Better to be hungry for it, to convey the eagerness-bordering-on-desperation that the business requires from young actors.

Jared's not ready for the sight that greets him in the audition waiting room that morning.

There's just one other guy in the room, and he's drop-dead gorgeous. When he raises the clearest green eyes Jared's ever seen and flashes a million-watt smile that could light up the entire building Jared's suddenly sweating for an entirely different reason than stage fright.

"Hey," Jared nods to the guy. He doesn't sit down yet because –– well, at least partly because the only other seat in the room is right next to Mr. Gorgeous, and Jared has this overwhelming fear of accidentally touching this perfect specimen of humanity because that would be weird.

But mostly it's because he can't sit still right now. It's down to two guys for this part, and it'll be either Jared or this dude, and no way can Jared sit still at a time like this.

At least that's what Jared tells himself.

"Hey, I'm Jensen," the guy puts his hand out and oh shit.

Jared stares blankly for way too long before wiping his sweating palm on his jeans and shaking Jensen's hand. Jensen's grip is firm and warm, like he's not nervous at all, the bastard.

"Yeah, I know," Jared confesses. "I looked you up. I like your work in _Dark Angel._ "

"Same here," Jensen says. "I can't say I've watched _Gilmore Girls,_ but thank you."

"So – you're reading for Sam?" Jared can't help asking, because this guy is a serious actor. He's got more credits than Jared on more shows, and if the studio execs are down to one or the other at this point, Jared's not sure he's getting the part.

"Nah," Jensen shakes his head. "I mean, I was. Then they told me they had this guy named Jared Pada-something that they were thinking about for Sam, so I think I'm here to read for Dean."

"For Dean? Really?" Jared's feeling like an idiot, like a thirteen-year-old girl with her first crush, and he can hardly concentrate on Jensen's words because he can't take his eyes off Jensen's luscious mouth.

This is insane.

"Yeah," Jensen shrugs. "I guess they want to see if we can work together. You know. They want to see if we have chemistry."

Jensen winks, and now Jared's sure Jensen's feeling the same thing. Jared's mouth drops open and he stares, which he doesn't even realize he's doing until Jensen says something.

"Hey, do you mind sitting down?" Jensen asks. "You're giving me a complex."

"Oh, sorry," Jared stammers, planting himself in the chair next to Jensen so fast he almost knocks it over. He can feel Jensen's heat, which means Jensen can feel his, and Jared's sweating profusely now, so Jensen can probably smell him, too.

Fuck. What is _wrong_ with him? He's not even attracted to guys. At least, he's never felt attracted to them before, and he's been around a lot of good-looking guys. It's sort of par for the course in this business.

But it's not just attraction he feels. It hit him when he first laid eyes on Jensen, when Jared first walked in the door and saw Jensen sitting there. Jared feels like he knows Jensen. Not like he's seen him before, or watched him on TV. It's like Jared really _knows_ him, like they've been together.

It's a feeling a little like déjà vu, but way more intense.

"So if they cast us together, we'll be brothers," Jared muses aloud, and Jensen looks up from the paper he's staring at – a page from the script for the _Supernatural_ pilot, Jared realizes – and nods distractedly.

"Yeah, I guess," he shrugs, then throws Jared a smirking grin. "Kinda hard to imagine, isn't it?"

"It kinda is," Jared agrees, and now he's blushing because he feels sure Jensen's flirting with him.

"I've been playing guest stars and recurring roles for so long, I can't even think about that kind of job security," Jensen says. "Don't wanna jinx it."

"No, of course not." Jared feels himself deflate. It's the job Jensen's lusting after. Of course it is. What a fool Jared is for thinking it's anything else. This guy can have anybody, man or woman. All he has to do is look at them.

All he had to do was look at Jared, and Jared's gone for him like a damn teenage girl. Jeez.

Fortunately, Jared's saved from further embarrassment by the studio rep, who opens the door and sticks her head into the room, raising her eyebrows at them appreciatively.

"Gentlemen? They're ready for you."

**//**//**

The rest, as they say, is history. Within a week they're shooting the pilot, spending every moment together, hanging out off-set as much out of enjoyment in each other's company as convenience. It's just easier to be together. Jared likes himself more when he's with Jensen, and Jensen seems completely enamored of his new co-star. Neither of them expects the job to last, but within a month they've figured out they're the best friends either of them has ever had.

At first they don't talk directly about how attracted they are to each other, and Jared endures Jensen's flirtatious looks and comments as best he can. Some of the crew tease them about it, so Jared knows it's not just him. Directors tell them to use the energy, and they do, sometimes playing it up too much. The incest jokes get raunchier, and Jared gets so used to being sexually suggestive with Jensen it becomes second nature.

The first time Jensen tackles Jared to the ground in a carefully choreographed fight scene, Jared's so hard he almost asks for a moment alone. Jensen smirks at him because he can feel Jared's erection pressed against his belly, which pisses Jared off and makes the scene work better than it probably has any right to do.

Then one day, things change. They're filming the fourth episode when Jensen pulls Jared aside and lays one on him, plush lips so soft and warm against Jared's it takes his breath away.

"Wha – what was that for?" Jared stammers when Jensen releases him and takes a step back.

"Been wanting to do that since that first day," Jensen tells him. They're alone in a dark corner of the set while the crew resets the scene for another take, and Jared's head spins. He's already half-hard, as he is most of the time around Jensen, and he's gotten so used to the sexual tension it's like a second skin, crawling and tightening itself across his body, crackling in his blood.

"You have?" Jared says eloquently, disbelieving his own ears.

"Yeah," Jensen says. "Haven't you? I mean, I'm not reading it wrong, am I?"

The way Jensen hesitates, biting the inside of his lips and flinching a little, does things to Jared's heart that no amount of confession in mere words could do. That he wants Jared but fears rejection is heart-breakingly obvious, and Jared understands now. Jared's got a lot of friends, he's had girlfriends, he has an on-again-off-again relationship at the moment with a woman, and Jensen can be excused for assuming Jared's as straight as they come. There's never been another man in Jared's life, romantically.

Jensen, on the other hand, has a reputation for being fairly aloof. He's got some friends, and Jared even knows a couple of them. But to Jared's knowledge, Jensen Ackles has never been romantically involved with anyone, male or female. There's been a lot of speculation about that, and most of the cast and crew assume Jensen's gay, although he's never come out to anyone Jared's ever heard of.

Up until this moment, Jared's reserved his own judgment on that question. He tells himself it's because he doesn't care; he'd crush on Jensen regardless of whether Jensen could ever return those feelings.

But secretly he couldn't help hoping.

"No," he says now, eloquent as always. "I mean yes. Yes, I wanted to do that since I met you, too."

Jensen smiles, the easy, comfortable grin Jared's not sure how he lived without for twenty-three years because it's as necessary as oxygen, clearly.

"You think we should just keep this to ourselves?" Jensen suggests. "Keep the rest of the world guessing?"

"Probably, yeah," Jared nods. "I mean, technically it's against our contracts to get personally involved with each other, right?"

Jensen's eyes narrow, and for a moment it looks like he's going to express just what he thinks about contracts and rules. Jared can almost hear him say, "Fuck the contracts!" in his best Dean Winchester voice.

Then Jensen raises his eyebrows and the familiar smirk returns to his expressive face. "I guess it is," he nods. "I guess it is. So. We're professionals. We can do our jobs without letting our personal lives get in the way, right?"

"Right," Jared agrees. "Can I kiss you now?"

"Okay, since it's only fair," Jensen says. "But then we keep it in our pants the rest of the day, and from now on whenever we're at work, right?"

"God, you're such a tease," Jared complains as he steps into Jensen's personal space, takes Jensen's face in his hands and tips it up so he can reach Jensen's lips. They're slathered in lip gloss, and Jared sucks on each one until the taste of the gloss is gone before plundering Jensen's warm, wet mouth.

**//**//**

When they started shooting in Vancouver, Jensen suggested Jared move into his apartment for convenience's sake. They got along so well anyway, and it already felt completely natural to spend their off-work time together. After nearly two months, they know each other pretty well. They had a lot in common to begin with, so it's been an easy transition. 

Besides, at first Jared was homesick. He'd never been away from Los Angeles for more than a few days at a time, and that was so he could fly home to San Antonio to hang out with his family and friends there. Most of Jared's show business friends were in Los Angeles, and he missed them. Working in Vancouver was isolating. Unlike Jensen, he hadn't worked on the genre shows that filmed in Canada, and he didn't have any friends here. Jared had always surrounded himself with friends, some of whom had been temporary lovers but remained friends afterwards because Jared worked so hard to keep it that way.

It occurs to him now that taking this step with Jensen might ruin their friendship. Jensen doesn't seem to be the type of person who has casual flings. Jared's never had a romantic relationship that lasted more than a few months. It might be a total disaster, this thing they just confessed they both want so badly.

But the sick thing is, Jared's shallow enough not to care, to throw caution to the winds. His heart beats fast as he starts the car. They've been sharing the driving because neither of them can stand the thought of being driven back and forth like movie stars, and Jared's hands sweat on the steering wheel so badly he's not sure he can keep the car on the road.

"Wait," was all Jensen said a few minutes ago when Jared tried to kiss him up against the side of the car, all eager, fumbling fingers and desperate panting mouth.

Jared almost whined with frustration as he danced back, his dick so painfully hard it's about all he can think about, but at least his Texas gentleman's upbringing is still operating. It's a good thing, too, because he's on auto-pilot right now, just going through the motions until Jensen finally lets him into his pants. He's been thinking about Jensen's naked body all day, ever since the kiss, and he's never been so turned on.

In the car, Jared keeps glancing over at Jensen's profile. Half of him can't believe this is finally happening. The other half is shocked that it's taken this long. He would've jumped Jensen's bones that first day in the audition room, if Jensen had allowed it. Getting this show, getting Jensen's friendship, and now to have this, too, feels almost overwhelming suddenly, and Jared takes in a shaky breath, grips the steering wheel till his knuckles turn white.

"Hey buddy," Jensen soothes, and at least Jensen doesn't try to touch him right now because Jared's seriously having trouble keeping the car on the road. "You okay?"

Jared tries to nod, swallowing thickly, fighting down the panic rising in his chest. "Yeah," he manages, but his voice is breathy, shaky, and he can feel Jensen's eyes on him, watching him.

"Hey, listen to me," Jensen goes on in that soothing voice. "Nothing's changed here, okay? It's still you and me, instant best friends for life. Ya got me? It's just us."

Jared nods a little too frantically. "I know," he says, hating his voice for sounding so high and squeaky. "I know. I just... I've never been with a guy." There, he said it. Now it's out there, at least.

As soon as he says it, he realizes that's not his biggest fear at all. His biggest fear is losing Jensen. He doesn't want to fuck this up.

"Neither have I," Jensen admits with a small shrug.

Jared glances at him, shocked. Was he serious? "Really? I mean, I thought you – Everybody thinks you're – "

"Gay?" Jensen provides helpfully. "Yeah, I know. It's the whole sensitive action man vibe I give off, I guess. Which is a stereotype, by the way. Just like the modeling thing. Not every male model is gay, not by a long shot."

"No, I know," Jared stammers. "It's just, I thought – You seemed – God, I'm such an idiot." 

Jensen shrugs again, and Jared shoots him a look.

"You're supposed to say, 'No, you're not, Jared, you're the smartest man I know.'"

Jensen grins so broadly his crow's feet get crow's feet. Jared's reminded that Jensen's older than he is, that he's had more time to figure out what he wants.

The fact that Jensen wants him takes Jared's breath away. Again.

The fact that Jensen's taken over two months to tell Jared how he feels, letting their friendship grow and take root first, ensuring there's a solid foundation for their relationship before they take the next step, feels both awesome and humbling. Jared's impressed by Jensen's maturity and thoughtfulness as much as by his patience and forbearance. Jensen's been in charge all along, Jared doesn't have any illusions about that. Jensen's controlled the pace of their relationship from the beginning, and Jared feels sure he can trust Jensen, perhaps more than he's ever trusted anyone except his parents.

Nevertheless, Jared's all over Jensen as soon as they get out of the car, crowding up behind him as he leads the way to the door, desperate to get a taste of his skin, to feel smooth hard muscle under his hands.

Jensen shrugs him off until they're inside their apartment, then melts willingly into Jared's arms, lifting his face to be kissed as his hands tug Jared's jacket off. They stumble across the living room towards Jensen's bedroom, dropping pieces of clothing as they go, keeping their mouths together as much as possible as they pull off shirts and get their hands on each other's bare skin.

When they tumble naked onto Jensen's bed it's over almost before it's begun. Jared rubs himself all over Jensen, slipping his hands down Jensen's broad back to grasp the perfect globes of his ass, wedging their dicks between them as he ruts desperately into the groove of Jensen's hip. Jensen curls one leg around Jared's waist and ruts back, fingers tangled in Jared's hair, face buried in Jared's neck. They come like that, almost simultaneously, shivering through the after-shocks of their long-repressed need for each other, and Jared's so grateful to take the edge off he almost cries.

Jensen falls asleep immediately, and Jared lies watching him, afraid to move for fear Jensen will wake up and leave. His arm starts to ache where it's wedged under Jensen's body, and Jared waits as long as he can stand it before he starts to slide it free. He goes slow and careful, but Jensen wakes up anyway, blinking at him from less than a foot away, his green eyes slightly myopic and sleepy.

Then Jensen seems to remember, and he smiles shyly at Jared as he rolls away, graceful as a cat.

"Ugh," he mumbles as he stares down at his belly. "What a mess, huh?"

"Big boys shoot big loads," Jared quips, feeling awkward because this is so new.

"Guess we'll just have to get used to that, won't we?" Jensen shrugs, rolling off the bed and onto his feet. Jared watches him as he heads to the bathroom, admiring the curved dip of his lower back, his muscled thighs, his perfect ass and his bow-legged gait. Jared can watch this forever, he thinks. It's his now.

Jared doesn't know what he's done to get so lucky.

Sometime that night, after more sex and showers and more sex, Jared falls asleep and dreams. When he wakes up the next morning he has that powerful sense of déjà vu again, like he did that first day in the studio executives' office in Burbank.

"Are you sure we've never met before?" he asks Jensen over breakfast. "You know, like hooked up at summer camp when we were kids or something?" In his dream, he was lying on a grassy bank beside a river or a lake, and he could've sworn Jensen was there with him.

Jensen shakes his head as he chews his toast. "I'd definitely remember you," he says. "You were hot even when you were a kid."

"How would you know?" Jared grins despite himself.

"Like I said when I met you, I looked you up," Jensen says. "All night."

"Oh my God." Jared rolls his eyes, then reaches across the table to wipe the crumbs off the corner of Jensen's mouth with his thumb.

"What?" Jensen looks indignant. "You didn't? Tell me you haven't been jacking off to pictures of me these past few months. I dare you."

"Oh my God, I am so carrying you back to bed right now," Jared growls, giving Jensen his best smolder from under his bangs.

"You can try," Jensen counters, smirking back at him, "but if you do we'll be late for work and everybody will know what we were doing last night."

"They're gonna know anyway," Jared says darkly, "when they see that mark I left on the back of your neck while I was rubbing my dick on your ass."

Jensen turns a brilliant shade of red and squirms in his seat, but he valiantly holds Jared's gaze, licking his tongue slowly along his bottom lip until Jared breaks the gaze first, huffing out a turned-on laugh as he shakes his head.

"One of these days, maybe we can find a hole or two for that dick of yours," Jensen hints, and Jared practically chokes on his orange juice.

**//**//**

They somehow manage to get to work on time that day, and every day afterwards, flirting shamelessly with each other under their breath, where the crew can't quite hear them. They make each other shake with laughter one minute, all hot and bothered the next, and it becomes a game some days just to see who will break first.

They keep their mutual promise to separate their personal and professional lives, and most of the time it works. They do their jobs on set, sometimes for fourteen hours straight without much in the way of breaks, and they even manage to maintain their work demeanor during those breaks, which Jared takes great pride in since it's particularly difficult given the proximity of their trailers and their tendency to share their breaks in one or the other of those trailers, usually Jensen's since Jared's is full of dogs.

Nevertheless, the crew figures it out. Maybe it's because the make-up girl keeps having to cover up the hickeys on Jensen's neck, even after nights when it's obvious Jensen didn't go anywhere but home after a long day. Maybe it's just because everybody was expecting it from the first moment they saw the boys together. Their fans clearly see them as a couple, if the fan fiction Kim Manners passes on to them to read is any indication.

"This stuff is pretty good," Jared comments as they're lying in bed one night, Jared reading Wincest and J-squared fics while Jensen pretends to read a Tom Clancy novel.

"It's just fantasy," Jensen scoffs. "They don't really know."

"Maybe not, but you've got to admit, these writers are pretty observant," Jared says.

"They see what they want to see," Jensen reminds him. "They don't see the real us. Nobody does."

Jared bites his lip and reads silently for another moment, then mutters, "Sometimes I wonder if _we_ see the real us."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jensen closes his book, which he probably wasn't reading anyway since he's been on the same page for the past five minutes.

Jared shrugs, closing his laptop and setting it aside. "That dream I had last week, when we were filming 'Faith,'" he says. "You remember. I told you about it."

"You woke up sobbing because you thought your brother was dead," Jensen nods. "Kinda hard not to notice, since you woke me up."

"It was so real," Jared shakes his head. "You know? The grief, the sense of loss, the details. I remembered his funeral! And my mom and dad, everybody so upset..."

"And then you called him the next morning and he was fine," Jensen nods. "It was just a dream, like I told you. Just the stress of the job. Just you internalizing the script, transposing real-life relationships over fictional ones. Getting overly invested in your character, Jare, that's all it was."

"Yeah, I know," Jared nods. "And you said it happens to you all the time."

Jensen hesitates, frowning a little. "Yeah," he admits finally. "It does, actually. That's why I know."

"That's why you call me Sam in your sleep sometimes," Jared teases, and Jensen glares.

"I do not," he protests, and Jared full-out grins.

"Oh, you so do," he says.

"I have a perfect grasp of the separation between fact and fantasy," Jensen insists. "You know I do."

"Maybe while we're working," Jared agrees. "But tell me you don't have weird dreams sometimes, Jen. Tell me your subconscious doesn't mix me up with somebody else in your mind once in a while."

Jensen's mouth drops open, like he's about to protest, then he seems to consider Jared's words more carefully. Jared reads confusion in Jensen's face as he looks away, like he's had a thought that bothers him and he's not quite ready to admit it.

"Hey, I'm not Sam. I know that," Jared scoots closer on the bed, reaches up and cups Jensen's cheek, turning him back to face Jared again. "I know you don't think I'm Sam, either. I was just joking, okay? You've got a better grasp on reality than anybody I know. I was just joking."

But he wasn't, and even as he kisses Jensen he can sense that Jensen's thinking. He's spooked.

"This show is weird, man," Jared offers as he pulls away again. "It gets to me too, sometimes. I'd only ever admit that to you, but it does."

_"You_ get to me sometimes," Jensen answers as he reaches for Jared, letting his book slide to the floor.

Jensen takes control of their lovemaking that night and Jared lets him, lets Jensen give it to him in that tender, intense way he makes love sometimes when he's in this mood. He pushes Jared down on the bed and kisses him like he might never get a chance to do it again, like it's his last night on Earth. He holds Jared's wrists over his head and gazes down at him with a film of tears over his beautiful green eyes, and Jared closes his own eyes just to shut out the sight because it's too much. It's overwhelming to be loved this much.

It's the way Dean loves Sam.


	6. Chapter 6

Sometimes it scares Jared, being loved the way Jensen loves him. He's only twenty-three, with his whole life still ahead of him, and although Jensen's never mentioned marriage or exclusive monogamy forever or anything of the sort, Jared's pretty certain this is it. It's weird to think that he knew that the moment he laid eyes on Jensen, but it's the truth.

Jared's friends can't believe it, either. They keep begging him to fly down to L.A. for a weekend, and once or twice he does, but he always brings Jensen. They're careful to keep up their "friendship" persona, and it confuses Jared's friends because it's obvious to them that Jensen is more than just a regular friend.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say what you and Jensen have going is an extra-special friendship," Chad comments after he pulls Jared aside, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"You're an idiot," Jared laughs, taking another sip of his beer. He watches Jensen from across the bar as Jensen gets an earful from a couple of Jared's female friends, who are thrilled to get a shot at the elusive genre actor.

Jensen raises his eyes, like he can feel Jared watching him, and for a moment the room falls away and it's just the two of them, the way it's supposed to be. The way it usually is now.

Jared's suddenly so homesick for their little apartment in Vancouver it practically makes him gasp.

Back in Vancouver, Jared's on-again-off-again girlfriend Sandy won't take the hint when Jared tells her it's not a good time to visit. She bursts in like a firecracker and demands that Jared take her out, give her attention, fuck her senseless the way he used to do. She doesn't understand why he spends all his spare time with Jensen, why he lives with Jensen, why he never calls her or texts her anymore.

"I'm in a relationship," Jared tells her. "It's just us now."

"So who is she?" Sandy asks, all round-eyed amazement and barely-concealed jealousy. "When do I get to meet this amazing woman who managed to make an honest man out of you?"

"You don't," Jared shakes his head. "Our relationship's a secret, and it needs to stay that way. It's part of my contract."

"Oh," Sandy lifts her eyebrows, then frowns as she catches a glimpse of something to the left of Jared's shoulder, something behind him across the lot. "Oh my God, is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan?"

Jared turns. A few feet away, just out of earshot, Jensen is talking to their guest star, his face animated and open, and Jared experiences a shock of jealousy as the older man bends down to whisper something in Jensen's ear that makes him laugh out loud. Morgan looks up and locks gazes with Jared, and it seems as though there's a look of triumph in his eyes.

Rage makes Jared's blood pound in his ears, makes him clench his fists, makes his nostrils flare. Yet even as he glares at Jeff Morgan, who's turned away by now to say something else to Jensen, Jared knows he's overreacting. Jared's just finished reading the script for the season finale, and it's got some intense scenes that border on non-con and hint at incest, and Jared can't help the way his body reacts, even though his mind knows better.

Morgan isn't really trying to take Jensen away from him, it just feels that way.

Jensen would never cheat on Jared; he loves Jared too much. The jealousy Jared's feeling – hell, the rage he feels when he watches Morgan and Jensen together – it's just a bi-product of the story arc of the last two or three episodes, which they're filming right now. They've been deep into some very physical scenes fraught with a lot of tension and angst, and Jared's just experiencing the residual energy from that.

_Normal character bleed,_ he tells himself. _Sam's jealous of Dean's love for his father. He doesn't feel John deserves that kind of devotion._ Plus, Sam's just sick enough to want Dean's love all for himself, Jared's brain adds helpfully.

It's completely irrational, and Jared knows he's being a big baby, but he can't help pouting when Jensen suggests they all go out together after filming that night. Sandy's staying over, seems a little put-out that Jared didn't offer to put her up, but she cheerfully invites herself along, clearly figuring that getting Jared drunk is her best shot at getting him into bed again.

Needless to say, Jared has just about the worst night of his life, and when Jared and Jensen get home later that evening, they have their first fight.

"What's wrong with you?" Jensen asks when Jared slams the door, then grabs a beer from the fridge and pops the top. He stands in the middle of their small kitchen, fuming, and he can't seem to calm down. He keeps replaying Jensen's rapt expression as he watched Morgan talk and it makes him want to break something.

"What's wrong with me?" Jared huffs. "What's wrong with _you?_ All you did all night was flirt with Morgan. Sandy and I might as well not even be there, the way you kept batting your eyelashes and laughing at every stupid thing he said."

"What?" Jensen's eyebrows go up and his eyes widen comically. "What are you talking about? He's Jeffrey Dean Morgan, man! Of course I love to talk to him. I love to hear him talk! What's wrong with that?"

"You barely took your eyes off him all evening," Jared mopes. "It's like we weren't even in the room."

Jensen shrugs expansively, arms flung wide, as if he's never heard anything so crazy.

"You had your friend here," he reminds Jared. "Sandy flew all the way up here from L.A. to spend time with you. She sure didn't come up to see _me,_ that's for sure. I figured you two had a lot of catching up to do. By the way, you totally should've offered her our guest room. It's not like we're using it or anything..."

"She doesn't know about us!" Jared explodes. "I didn't tell her!"

Jensen seems taken aback. He deflates a little, suddenly looking small and vulnerable. "Why not, Jared? Huh? Are we – you're not ashamed of us or anything, are you?"

"What? No!" Jared is shocked. "Oh my God, how could you think that?"

Jensen looks away, opens his mouth and closes it again, and suddenly Jared's forgotten why he was so angry. Suddenly all he wants to do is gather Jensen into his arms and promise to love him until the day he dies.

"Look," Jared takes a step forward, sets his beer on the granite-top island counter. "Sandy's a blabber-mouth. She loves to gossip. If I told her about us, it'd be all over Hollywood by tomorrow night. I just didn't want that to happen, that's all."

Jensen glances up from under his eyelashes, and Jared's heart races.

"She still thinks you're available," Jensen says, and Jared shakes his head quickly.

"No! No, she doesn't, Jensen, I swear," he rushes to dispel any jealousy Jensen must be feeling right now because Jensen knows about Sandy, knows she and Jared used to sleep together, and Jared never intended to make Jensen feel threatened in that way. "I told her I was in a steady relationship. I just didn't say who with."

Jensen's jaw clenches and his eyes narrow as he considers this, then he nods and lowers his eyes again. "You said we were steady?" he says, keeping his eyes lowered.

"Yeah." Jared throws his arms up in a copy of the gesture Jensen made earlier. "Well, maybe I didn't use the word 'steady,' but she got the message, I'm sure she did. You don't need to worry about her, Jensen. I would never do anything to hurt you, and you're the only person I want to be with now."

"Now," Jensen repeats, still not looking at Jared. "I'm the only person you want to be with, for _now."_

"That's not what I said," Jared shakes his head. "God, how can you be so insecure?"

He knows he's blundered as soon as he says it. He can see Jensen's jaw tighten again, the way he nods like he's heard it before, like he expects it.

"You're beautiful and funny and so, so talented, Jensen. You can have anyone you want. Anyone! Jeffrey Dean Morgan would be lucky to have you, so lucky. _I'm_ so lucky I can hardly believe it. I pinch myself every goddamn day because this doesn't seem real. None of it feels real! I don't deserve this! What did I ever do to deserve this? To deserve _you?_ I feel like I must be in some kind of dream and I'll wake up tomorrow morning and it'll all be over. It's all _so_ perfect. You, this job, this life? How come I get it all, huh? How can I possibly have everything I ever wanted?"

Jared knows he's babbling now, but he can't seem to stop himself. He's so worked up, he's almost hysterical. He has to make Jensen see how much he means to Jared, but at the same time he needs Jensen to understand.

"Jared, slow down," Jensen puts a hand on Jared's arm, moves into his personal space, and it's like a balm on Jared's soul. Jensen's physical presence calms Jared, settles him, and Jared stops mid-sentence and swallows. "Hey buddy, it's okay. It's me, remember?"

Jared nods gratefully. He opens his mouth but Jensen puts his fingers over Jared's lips, shushing him.

"I think we've both been working too hard," Jensen suggests sagely. "I think you're putting way too much pressure on yourself, Jare. And I think, when we get done filming this week, I think it would be good for you to go back to L.A. for a while. Just hang out with your buddies, have fun, be a kid again."

Jared blinks and sucks in a breath as he gets Jensen's meaning. "Alone?" he gapes, shocked. "Without you? How can you even suggest that? How can you think that I would go anywhere without you? What are you saying, Jen? Are you saying we should break up? Is that what you're saying?"

"Shhh," Jensen shakes his head, grips Jared's biceps almost painfully as he gazes up at him, more serious and intent than he ever is off-camera. "That's not what I'm saying, okay? That's not what I'm saying."

Jared takes a deep breath, tries to settle his pounding heart so he can focus. He wonders vaguely how the hell they got to this point from his earlier jealousy over Jensen's flirtation with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and he feels like an idiot. He feels like a fool. He feels like he's totally missing something and he can't quite figure out what it is.

"I love you, Jensen," Jared blurts before he can think. "I can't – I don't want to live without you."

It's so true it scares him, and for a moment Jared understands why Jensen suggested they separate, even if it's only temporary. The bond between them is deep and intense and fucking _old,_ for God's sake, like something created outside time and space. It's a little overwhelming for a twenty-three-year-old kid who's used to fucking around and partying when he's not working his ass off to follow his dream.

And just as suddenly as that thought came to him, Jared decides he must be drunk. No sane person would ever come to this conclusion, or would ever have these thoughts in the first place. Jared huffs out an embarrassed laugh and hangs his head like the fool that he is. Maybe Jensen's right. Maybe Jared's cracking up. Maybe he really needs this break.

"We don't even know if we'll be renewed yet," Jensen reminds him, as if Jared didn't just say what he did and then had a little mini-freak-out about it. "For all we know, it'll be back to auditions and guest-starring roles for us both."

Suddenly the whole thing flashes in front of Jared's eyes, and he realizes Jensen's right. This could all be over soon. No more show, no more sharing this close, intense life with Jensen. Nine months of his life just over and in the past. Jared goes back to L.A. and he and Jensen go back to competing for the same jobs. Jensen's not breaking up with him; he's just reminding Jared of the reality of their lives, how the natural course of things will take them in different directions, just as it did before that fateful day in that office, almost a year ago now.

Jared tells himself he can handle this. He's a big boy, not a kid anymore. He knew this was how it was going to be, even though he hadn't thought it through because he was so wrapped up in this life, in Jensen. But of course the life of an actor is never stable. The future is never sure, and Jensen's absolutely right to remind him of that fact. Even if Jensen stays with him, even if they manage to keep their relationship going after all this is over, their work lives will separate them. Maybe one of them will end up back here, as a regular on some other show. The other one can't afford to tag along, to be away from the center of things in Los Angeles. One missed call, one overlooked text, and it's all over. That's the way this business is.

That night, they make love with an intensity that Jared can't help expressing. He's a sentimental fool who's just confessed his undying love to the one person he cares most for in this entire world, and it makes him incredibly emotional. Jensen kisses away his tears, takes him firmly in hand and goes down on him like his life depended on it, and Jared can't help feeling that it does. Sex with Jensen is an extension of something deeper; it's almost mystical sometimes, and Jared's just emotional enough tonight not to care how corny that sounds. Jensen's warm, wet mouth on his dick is heaven, Goddamn it. It _is._

At the end of the week, when filming ends, the cast and crew of _Supernatural_ say their goodbyes. The wrap party is a blast, with everyone reminding each other what a good time they had making the show, even if it was short-lived. Jensen's planning to stay in Vancouver for a while, to hang out with his old buddies from _Smallville,_ which hasn't wrapped yet for the year. He drives Jared to the airport and hugs him tight on the curb.

"Take care of yourself," Jensen demands gruffly, and Jared fights back tears because they're in a public place and people are watching.

"You, too," he manages, keeping his eyes on the concrete beneath their feet, unable to look at Jensen.

Jensen has to give Jared a little push to get him to go, and Jared does it, even managing to look back and give a little wave because he knows Jensen's still standing there, watching Jared walk away, and he deserves at least that much.

Jared makes it to the plane, gets onboard, stows his carry-on and accepts a drink from the flight attendant before the tears start to flow. He cries almost the entire way to Los Angeles, accepting tissue after tissue from the worried flight attendant until she finally brings him the whole box. He texts "Miss you" and "Love you" to Jensen over and over, not even caring how pathetic he's being. When he gets off the plane he leaves Jensen a long, rambling voicemail about how miserable this is, how stupid this is, how he'll never make it a week without Jensen and why did he ever promise to try?


	7. Chapter 7

By the end of that first week back in L.A., Jared's starting to feel better. He's beginning to see why Jensen made him do this. He hangs out with Chad and Danneel and his old pals from _Gilmore Girls_ and Disney. He goes to the beach and parties with his friends and it's better than he imagined, given the huge hollow place in the middle of his chest where Jensen should be. He's surviving without Jensen, without his life in Vancouver, and that's an accomplishment, right?

Danneel finds him hiding out in a guest bedroom at her house in Malibu during a party one weekend, binge-watching _Supernatural_ just so he can watch Jensen, just so he can see him move and talk and look at Jared, even if only on the screen. She punches him, turns off the TV, cleans him up and sends him home to Texas for the weekend, which stretches into two weeks because his mother can tell he's heartsick. Sherry Padalecki decides he needs to hang out with his old friends in San Antonio for a while so she can fatten him up on her home cooking and so he can celebrate his birthday with family, just like he did when he was a kid.

On July 19, Jared's phone vibrates as he's watching the game with his brother. He excuses himself and answers it in his old bedroom, the one with its walls still covered with banners from his old high school, awards from speech tournaments, and posters of Pearl Jam.

"Jensen?"

"Happy birthday, kid," Jensen's deep voice breathes into his ear, and the world falls away. Jared chokes up and can't speak, wants Jensen so badly he can taste it. "Jared? You okay, buddy?"

"Yeah," Jared manages as he slides to the floor, phone pressed to his ear, eyes squeezed shut against his tears, surrounding himself with the illusion of Jensen all around him. "Yeah, I'm fine. You?"

Jensen chuckles, low and soft, and it makes Jared's whole body quiver, makes his dick fill and throb painfully.

"You're a terrible liar, Jay," Jensen says quietly, and Jared nods, even though he knows Jensen can't see him.

"I know," he says, wiping his leaking eyes on his sleeve. "What's up?"

'Well, I got some news yesterday, but I wanted to wait till today to call you," Jensen says, and the teasing tone in his voice makes Jared sit up right away.

"What? What is it?"

"It's official," Jensen says, and Jared can tell he's grinning like a five-year-old. "We got the green light on season two. Filming starts next month."

"Oh my God, you fucker!" Jared gasps. "You should have called me right away!" The word had been hopeful but not definite as of last week, and Jared had been on tinder-hooks waiting.

"Nah, I wanted to give you a birthday present," Jensen laughs. "Plus, I really needed to call you today, and I couldn't call two days in a row. That would be weird."

"Why? You could've just called yesterday and wished me a happy birthday then," Jared's too overjoyed to care, really, but something about Jensen's words seems a little off.

"Wanted you to turn twenty-four first," Jensen says, like that makes any sense.

"Why? What's so important about being twenty-four?" Now Jared's really curious. And confused.

"It means you're not twenty-three anymore," Jensen says. "You made it."

"Yeah," Jared agrees. He feels a chill go up his spine and he pulls his hoodie around him tighter, wishing it was Jensen. "Yeah, I made it."

"Happy birthday, Jared," Jensen murmurs again.

**//**

Jensen meets Jared at the airport in Vancouver and it takes Jared's breath away for a moment. He has to literally double over with his hands on his knees and find his breath again while Jensen rubs his back.

"Good to see you too, kid," Jensen murmurs soothingly.

"I'm not a kid," Jared protests as he gasps for breath. "You really have to stop calling me that."

When the world stops spinning for a moment Jared straightens up and grabs Jensen into a crushing hug, closing his eyes so he can shut out everything but Jensen's warm, solid body pressed against him as tight as he can hold him.

"I dreamed you were dead," Jared gasps against the side of Jensen's head. "Dreamed you died and turned into an angel."

Jensen stiffens fractionally in Jared's arms, then relaxes again almost immediately.

"It's that damn script," he mutters. "'In My Time of Dying.' It got to me, too."

In the car on the way to their apartment, Jared steals glances at Jensen because it almost hurts too much to look at him. Then when he can stand it he just gives up and full-on stares. Fucker's grown more gorgeous, if that's possible, and Jared's more in love than ever. It's as if that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" thing is some kind of curse.

"So your little test didn't really work out," Jared announces, and Jensen throws him a look that's almost an eye-roll, so Jared knows he understands. "I still want to spend the rest of my life with you, come hell or high water."

"Who said anything about spending the rest of our lives together?" Jensen demands, and Jared grins because he's sure that's what Jensen wants, too.

But they don't talk about it directly. It's as if Jensen's still too afraid he might jinx it somehow. But Jared's sure now. Their forced separation has clarified things for him, and there's no doubt in his mind that Jensen's it for him. It's not just the heady rush of constant exposure or the steady menu of incredible sex or the intensity and isolation of their jobs.

It's Jensen.

**//**//**

The second year of filming goes better than the first, if only because everyone's more confident about what they're doing. Their characters are better fleshed out and dependable, and the scripts are fantastic, as far as Jared's concerned. He's perfectly happy playing the little brother, in life as in fiction, and he lets Jensen guide their private lives in a way that feels natural. Comfortable. They've fallen into a rhythm of give-and-take with each other that gives richness to their characters, and they know it. They're proud of it.

Jared's family visits the set one weekend and Sherry Padalecki takes one look at her son with Jensen and figures it out.

"Now I understand why you were moping around last summer," she says triumphantly. "You were missing _him."_

Jared blushes and pulls her into a hug so she doesn't notice. "He's kinda hard not to miss," Jared agrees good-naturedly.

"Hard to miss, you mean," Jensen corrects him with a grin as he shakes Jared's dad's hand. "Good to see you, sir."

"Gerry," Jared's dad corrects. "Please call me Gerry."

It's the second time the Padaleckis have visited the set, the first time being early in season one, before the boys had consummated their relationship, and they'd barely met Jensen that time. This time Jared and Jensen pick the restaurant and make the arrangements for the evening meal together, then play hosts for the weekend, giving a tour of their favorite places in Vancouver with obvious pleasure in each other's company. Although they're careful and practiced at reining in public displays of affection, they don't shy away from casual touching, and they're so accustomed to being in each other's personal space they move together naturally without even noticing, finish each other's sentences with barely any hesitation.

"You guys are so cute it's almost gross," Jared's sister comments after observing them for a few minutes at dinner that first night.

"Anything you want to tell us?" his mother asks as Jared's helping her on with her coat later.

"What? No!" Jared blushes again. He glances over where Jensen is talking to the maître d', taking care of the bill like a good host. "We're good friends, Mom. I mean, I guess it's more than that; he's the best friend I've ever had."

Sherry Padalecki looks up at her son speculatively for a moment, then smiles and nods. "I'm sure you'll tell us when you're ready, honey," she says confidently. "Just don't think you're fooling anyone who really knows you."

Jared bites the inside of his lip, glances over at Jensen and exchanges a look with him that fills Jared with warmth. "He's the most amazing person I've ever known," Jared admits softly. "I feel like I could spend every day for the rest of my life with him and never get bored, you know? He really gets me."

Sherry nods again and pats his arm gently. "I think he does," she agrees. "And just so you know, I approve."

**//**//**

"My mom really likes you," Jared reveals later when he and Jensen are alone in their apartment. 

As usual, they barely made it through the door before grabbing each other, tearing away each other's clothing, desperate to taste and feel each other after the long day of pent-up emotion and desire. They end up on the couch, Jensen completely nude except for his tie, Jared mostly still clothed except for his shirts and shoes. He already removed his tie in the car.

In the after-glow of their nearly-mutual orgasms, Jared lies sprawled half on top of Jensen, half on the floor. He's got his ear pressed to Jensen's chest, listening to Jensen's heart-beat as he trails his fingers up the soft skin of Jensen's side. Jensen plays with his hair, then tips his face down to bury it in the top of Jared's head, kissing him there.

"I like her, too," Jensen says quietly. "And your dad. And your sister. Haven't met your brother, but I'm sure I'd like him, too."

Jared turns his face into Jensen's chest, kisses the warm skin, still flushed with pleasure.

"She figured it out," Jared murmurs. "She knows about us."

Jared can feel Jensen take a deep breath, let it out slow. His fingers slide through Jared's hair, soothing.

"Jen?" Jared raises his head. "Why don't we tell them? Why don't we just come out to them? What would be so terrible about that?"

Jensen breathes deep and closes his eyes.

"We could tell your family, too," Jared adds, almost as an afterthought.

Jensen never talks about his family, never visits them, and Jared knows there's something wrong there, something off. He's heard Jensen on the phone with his mother a couple of times, or at least Jared assumes it's Jensen's mother since he calls her "mom." They're quiet, hushed conversations that Jared's only dimly aware of because they only happen when Jensen thinks Jared's sleeping, which is why Jared never asks. He doesn't want to pry, figures it's a sore topic for Jensen and if he just leaves it alone, maybe one of these days Jensen will tell him.

"Tell them what?" Jensen huffs. "That we're shacked up together? Big surprise there."

"What? No!" Jared shakes his head. "Tell them that we're a couple. That we love each other. That it's probably pretty permanent so they better get used to it."

"Probably?" Jensen snorts.

"Definitely," Jared corrects. "We're definitely permanent. Jensen, what's wrong? Why do you keep pushing me away when we talk about this? What are you so afraid of?"

Jared can see he's crossed the line by the way Jensen's impossible lips curl into a snarl, by the way his jaw tightens and his whole body shifts and stiffens under Jared, and not in a sexy way.

Well, not exactly in a sexy way. Jensen's naked with his legs spread and one of them up on the back of the couch and Jared's got him pinned down with his body, so it's not like Jared's turned off or anything. He's pretty much ready to go again if Jensen's willing. Nevertheless, Jensen stops stroking his hair and pushes on his shoulders instead, and Jared gets the message.

"Get off me," Jensen demands, and Jared does, awkwardly, crawling backwards off the couch onto the floor, getting tangled in his pants because they're undone so they fall off his hips when he tries to stand up.

Jensen doesn't even try to help him. He rolls over and gets smoothly to his feet, grabbing his shirt so he can wipe his belly off as he heads to the bathroom, and suddenly Jared's getting another eyeful of that perfect ass and those muscled bow legs walking away from him.

"Jensen," he calls after his co-star, his best friend, his lover. "We need to talk about this. We never talk about our relationship, and that really has to stop, don't you think? I mean, who are we, Sam and Dean?"

Jensen pauses at the door of the bathroom, turning just enough to throw a smirk over his shoulder.

"No, Sam and Dean talk," he argues. "They may not communicate perfectly, but they don't have to. They know how important they are to each other. They don't need words for that."

"Fuck that, man," Jared throws his arms up in frustration as Jensen turns away from him into the bathroom and closes the door.

**//**//**

"Jared, you know this show may get canceled," Jensen says later when he's in bed with his laptop and Jared won't let it go, won't stop pacing the floor. "You know we're not always gonna have this. It'll all end one day, and then you'll move back to L.A. and your life there. You know that. We shouldn't have to talk about it. There is no 'permanent' in this business."

"You keep saying that like you're so sure I'd want to break up with you when the show ends," Jared says. "I don't get how you can assume that."

"Show romances are common, Jay, you know that," Jensen says. "The intimacy and trust of working together makes them almost inevitable. But they always end when the show does. And right now it doesn't look good for this show going on much past this year. I'm just being practical here."

"Do you want to drive me away, is that it?" Jared asks, angrier than he means to be, but it's late and he's tired. Having his family here has made him emotional. "Last summer wasn't enough for you to see that I want this? I really want to be with you, Jensen, no matter what. Even if we end up on different shows after this, I'll still want us to be together. I want this, permanently. Why can't you believe that? What do I have to do to convince you I'm committed here?"

Jensen shakes his head. "You're still young, Jared," he says. "You don't know."

"You keep saying that," Jared snaps. "You're agist, you know that? I'm old enough! Old enough to know what I want, and how I want it, and you don't have the right to decide for me. So unless you've been hiding something or you've got somebody else you're not telling me about, something that prevents us from being together for the long term...?"

"There's nobody else, Jared," Jensen sighs. "There'll never be anyone else for me, that's the problem."

Jared's mouth drops open with an angry comeback, then snaps shut because Jensen looks so small and vulnerable all of a sudden that all Jared wants to do is cuddle him.

How does he _do_ that?

"That doesn't sound like a problem, Jen," Jared says, dropping to his knees on the floor next to Jensen. "It sounds like a promise."

Jensen shakes his head. "It's more like a curse," he mumbles, and Jared waits patiently until Jensen looks up, his beautiful eyes shining with moisture. "I don't want to hold you back, Jay. You can do great things with your life, be a really great star. Don't let me keep you down."

"Oh my God, is that what you're afraid of?" Jared breathes incredulously. "You think you might stifle me? Jensen, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. _You're_ the one with star potential, man. _You're_ the one who'll go on to greatness one day. You're the most underrated genre actor I've ever met! This show doesn't deserve you. Hell, _I_ don't deserve you. You need to be a movie star, man. Captain America or the next Batman. Yeah, that's it. They should make you the next Batman."

Jensen lays his open palm against Jared's cheek and leaves it there, just looking at him with a slight smile on his soft lips and the gentlest of looks in his eyes. Jared's never felt so adored.

"I've already got everything I ever wanted," Jensen says quietly. "I'm done."

"Oh yeah, done at twenty-eight," Jared scoffs, shaking Jensen's hand off as he climbs to his feet, feeling fiercely defensive on Jensen's behalf all of a sudden. "How can you say that? You're not even thirty. When this show ends you'll go on to greatness, mark my words. And I want to see it. I want to be there to watch you eat your words, Ackles. Done, my ass."

"Come to bed, Jared," Jensen sighs, closing his laptop and leaning down to slide it under the bed beneath him. "We've got the mid-season finale to film on Monday, and I for one need my rest before we go into that."

Jared can't argue with that, nor with the fact that they're both tired and in need of a break.

He's just glad that this time, they'll be together. At least he's managed to get Jensen to agree to come with him to Texas and California this time, and they've even planned a family ski trip in Colorado over New Year's, so Jensen will get to meet Jared's brother.

It occurs to Jared that Jensen never once mentioned visiting his own family, although Jared knows they live in Texas, too, so it ought to be easy for Jensen to see them over Christmas. It ought to be convenient for Jensen to introduce his family to Jared, even if he doesn't want to reveal the exact nature of their relationship. Jared gets the impression Jensen's family isn't exactly tolerant of his homosexuality, although Jensen's never said so.

Jared makes a mental note to bring it up later, when they're both feeling more rested.

**//**//**

As it turns out, Jensen spends all his time over the winter hiatus with Jared and Jared's family and friends. After New Year's they hang out with mutual friends in Los Angeles for a few days, then fly back to Vancouver together. When Jared brings up Jensen's family, Jensen shrugs and says, "They're in Europe," and leaves it at that.

Oh. Okay, Jared thinks. But now they've been together almost a year and a half and Jared has never met Jensen's folks, so Jared figures it's time to talk about it.

"There's nothing to tell," Jensen insists over beers at their favorite local bar back in Vancouver. "I'm an only child, conceived after my mother was told she couldn't have kids, so I was kind of a miracle baby. I was doted on and spoiled growing up. Dad's an actor, Mom's a volunteer coordinator who helps raise money for various charities in the Dallas area. They're well off and retired now, so they travel a lot."

"None of which explains why you never see them," Jared nods. "You rarely even _talk_ to them."

Jensen shrugs. "We're not close. They never expected to be parents. Raising me wasn't exactly the way they wanted to spend eighteen years of their lives, but they did it. Once I graduated high school and headed off to Hollywood, they were done. End of story."

Except that wasn't quite the whole story, as Jared learns one night when Jensen wakes him up because he's crying in his sleep. It starts out as little whimpers and moans, and by the time Jared comes to full consciousness Jensen's sobbing, tossing fitfully in his sleep, arms flailing.

"Jensen! Hey! Wake up!" Jared complains as Jensen's left arm smacks him in the chest.

"Jared! No! No! Oh God, no, Jay, come back! Don't go!" Jensen's sobs become words, maybe because he hears Jared in his sleep, and Jared sits up, groggy but worried. He leans over Jensen, whose eyes are still closed, and shakes him gently.

"Jensen? Hey, buddy, wake up! I'm right here, man. Not going anywhere. Hey, babe, wake up!"

Jensen goes still but his mouth keeps moving, muttering something in a language Jared's never heard before but which sounds a little like Latin, a little like Arabic.

'Jensen!" Jared calls louder, shakes harder, and suddenly Jensen's eyes snap open. He stares at Jared blankly for a moment, then a tiny frown crosses his forehead.

"Jared?"

"Yeah," Jared smiles, reassuring. "Yeah, buddy. It's me. You okay? You were having some pretty intense dreams there."

Instead of answering, Jensen glances around, his forehead furrowing deeper.

"Where are we?" he asks as he sits up, glancing down at himself, at the tee-shirt and shorts he pulled on after they had sex and showered earlier. Jensen lays a splayed hand on his chest and blinks up at Jared in obvious confusion.

"In our apartment," Jared answers after hesitating a moment, concern tickling at the back of his skull. "In Vancouver. Jensen, are you okay? You're not still asleep, are you?"

"What?" Jensen's rubbing the back of his neck, still looking around, still frowning. "No. I'm awake. I just – What year is it?"

"Okay, you're starting to freak me out here," Jared puts a hand on Jensen's shoulder to get him to focus, to make him look at Jared. "Did you take something? Wait, no. You had the same thing I did for dinner. Nothing hallucinogenic, not even that much booze..."

"Jared, answer the question!"

"Two-thousand-seven," Jared says automatically, because it's Jensen, and Jared is programmed to respond to Jensen, to do what he asks, no matter how strange it might seem.

Which yeah, might be a little weird, but it is what it is and Jared's just grateful that Jensen seems to be okay again. Because whatever just happened was freaky and Jared hopes Jensen isn't sick or having a brain aneurism or maybe an epileptic fit ––

"Jared, listen to me," Jensen grabs Jared's biceps and hell yeah, Jared is on board with another round of what happened earlier if this will take their minds off whatever weird thing just happened. "I don't have much time. I need you to listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you, and please don't interrupt, you got me?"

Jared nods, definitely freaked out now.

"You and me, we've met before," Jensen says, voice low and soft. "In another reality. I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth. I was a guardian angel and you were the human I was sent to help, and I fucked up. I fucked up, Jared. So I made a deal and I reset everything. I went back to the beginning to be reborn as a human, and guess what? I fucked up again. Big surprise. So now I'm trying to fix it. Again. And if I can't get it right this time... Fuck, Jared, you have no idea how fuckin' messed up this is! So listen to me. You have to listen, okay? I need you to do exactly what I say."

Jared swallows, opens his mouth to say something that won't come out because Jensen's staring at him, pleading with him for real about something important and Jared can't think straight. Those beautiful green eyes are gazing at him with such open, honest love and devotion that Jared does the only rational thing he can do.

He leans forward, grabs Jensen's face between his hands, and kisses him.

Jensen melts into him, kisses back with naked desire, and for a moment Jared loses himself, just goes with it because Jensen's unguarded and so in love it's like a miracle. Jensen's glorious right now, defenseless and open, and it takes Jared's breath away. It makes him want to bottle this moment and keep it forever.

It makes Jared completely ignore what Jensen just said because his lips are so soft and responsive Jared never wants to stop kissing them.

When he finally comes up for air, Jensen's flushed and blissed-out, his lips kiss-swollen and damp, his long, dark eyelashes fanning across his soft, pale cheeks. He looks unusually beautiful and fragile in the dim light through the curtains. He seems ethereal, unearthly, like he's not completely human, like part of him belongs somewhere else.

He's also sound asleep.

Probably for the best, Jared decides. That was some of the craziest shit he's ever heard, although Jared's almost one-hundred-percent certain Jensen was having some flukey waking-dream. Not like the first time one of them has internalized a script. They've just been filming "What Is and What Should Never Be," they're both memorizing the script for the two-part season finale now, and it's no surprise that alternate realities and weird resurrections got mixed up in Jensen's subconscious.

Then things get weirder.

"He's out," says a familiar voice from the corner of the room. Jared jumps backwards off the bed, heart-pounding. His instincts take over and he's ready to defend Jensen with his bare fists if he has to.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan stands in the corner, wearing a long black coat over jeans and a tee-shirt. He's got his hands in the pockets of the coat, and he's standing so still it's like he's not even there, like he's a kind of dark apparition silhouetted against the pale curtains behind him.

"What the hell?" Jared exclaims. "How did you get in here? What are you doing here?"

"You really want to hear this with your pants off?" Morgan asks dryly. 

Jared glares at him, then bends to grab his sweatpants off the floor. He glances at the bed as he pulls them on, but Jensen sleeps on, oblivious.

"Don't worry, he can't hear us," Jeff says. "I've made sure he's in a deep sleep. It's you I need to talk to."

"What? Why? What the hell's this about that can't wait till morning, Morgan?" Jared demands, sticking with indignation so he doesn't have to face the niggling sense of something not right, something really off about this.

"I'm not him, you know," Jeff says with a slight smile. "It's just convenient to appear to you this way. Jensen sees this too, when he looks at me. To him I'm a kind of father figure. To you, I'm the competition. Just a tad threatening. Did I get it right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jared shakes his head. "What are you doing here?"

"He loves you more than you can possibly understand," Morgan says, like he's not even listening to Jared. His eyes drop to the form on the bed as he speaks, and his look is fond. Then he looks up at Jared and his gaze turns hard and sharp again. "You can't even imagine what he gave up for you. He abandoned his home, his family, his immortality, for God's sake. Just gave it all up so he could live his life out here, on Earth, with you."

"Look, if this is some weird improv thing you're doing..." Jared hesitates, looks around wildly as an idea hits him. "You're not filming this, are you? Wait, how did you even get in here?"

"He's an angel, dumb-ass," Morgan goes on as if Jared hadn't even spoken. "You know that. You know there's something off about him. You could sense it, right from the start. And you've been having dreams, feelings of déjà vu, ever since you met him."

Jared stares. Memories flood his mind as if Morgan has magically put them there, moments when he felt so sure he'd met Jensen before, moments when he almost remembered being with Jensen in the distant past, before they first met. Jared suddenly remembers having dreams starting just after he met Jensen, dreams in which he'd been living another life, a life filled with tragedy and unhappiness.

"How do you – How do you even know about that?" Jared almost whispers.

"He thinks he fucked up," Morgan goes on, like Jared isn't even there. "He thinks he destroyed your life in that other reality, and now he's afraid he's doing it again. But here's the thing. He didn't. Not then, and not now. He's not doomed to mess things up for you, he just thinks he is. He's just fucked up in the head because his mother didn't love him and his father was disappointed in him and he can't believe anybody would ever love him if they knew what a fuck-up he is, blah blah blah."

"Jesus, dude, you seriously need to get a life," Jared huffs out a breath. "Even if what you're telling me is true, you are way too close to this thing. You need to step way the hell back."

"He's my charge!" Morgan bellows, and his eyes almost seem to glow for a minute, sending shivers up Jared's spine. He takes his hands out of his pockets and clenches his fists. "He was _my_ responsibility, and I fucked up! I didn't realize you and he were fuckin' soul-twins. Nobody told me!"

Jared glances at the bed, but Jensen's still out cold. Jared's having chills now, and it's not just because he's half naked.

"Soul-twins?" he repeats, and his voice sounds choked.

"Yeah, you know. Soulmates. Heloise and Abelard, Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise."

"Thelma and Louise are fictional characters," Jared points out.

"Maybe in _this_ reality," Morgan scoffs. "I didn't even know it was possible between an angel and a human. Normally, we don't have souls. But of course Jensen's unique. And now he's stuck in this life where he thinks you'd be better off without him."

Jared shakes his head. "That's just not true. There's no way he thinks that."

But even as he says it, Jared knows it's true. It explains Jensen's hesitation to commit to their relationship for the long-term, his insistence on Jared having a life and a career after the show ends, his apparent conviction that Jared won't want to stay with him after it's over, no matter how Jared insists on the opposite.

"I can't stand the way Heaven operates sometimes," Morgan growls. "Their management style is all top-down. Too much information is doled out on a fuckin' need-to-know basis. If I had known this about you two to begin with..."

"What – what difference would that make? Assuming – you know. Assuming what you're saying makes any sense at all. Which it doesn't, of course, but..."

"What part of 'You and Jensen are soul-mates' are you not hearing, Jared?" Morgan shakes his head in obvious exasperation. "You were created from the same spec of cosmic dust, back at the beginning of time. You're two halves of the same whole. Neither of you even really exists without the other. Call it a curse, call it fate, call it a fuckin' catastrophe if you want. The fact is, you're pre-programmed to find each other, in every reality. You're always going to be drawn together. Time could restart a billion times – and yeah, I guess some of those times you might not find each other, you might live out your lives alone and miserable and never know why. But the fact is, you're meant to be together. Destined. Pre-ordained by God or whatever created the universe in the first place. And if I had just known this tiny piece of crucial information – if Heaven had just kept me in the loop on that one tiny detail! – none of this would have happened."

Everything Morgan's saying feels right, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Jared can feel in his bones that it's right. He's felt something beyond his control about his attraction to Jensen from the moment they first met, so having it explained to him isn't the surprise it probably should have been. He's just amazed he hasn't figured it out for himself before now, although the irony of having an actual honest-to-God angel spell it out for him isn't lost on Jared.

"Okay, so you're saying there's something 'supernatural' about our attraction to each other," Jared says. "And Jensen is a former angel from a different time-line. I'm gonna go with that for a minute because it just sounds crazy enough to be true. So what's the problem here?"

"The problem is Jensen's planning to leave you," Morgan growls, "which, remember the part about misery and loneliness? Not a good outcome."

"How can you know he's planning to leave?" Jared demands, although he feels the sinking kick in the gut that tells him Morgan's right. Jensen's told him as much.

Morgan takes a deep breath, lets out a long-suffering sigh. "I have access to future time-lines," he explains. "Being head of a department has its perks. Right after the show ends, Jensen leaves, and there doesn't seem to be anything you can say to him that will make him change his mind. He's convinced you're better off without him. End of story."

Chills run up Jared's spine, and he's learning to trust them, learning to recognize the truth when he hears it.

"When?" he asks, but Morgan shakes his head.

"Better for you not to know too much about the future," he says darkly, and all Jared can think is he's got another year, maybe two. The show hasn't wrapped for the current season yet, but they still don't have the go-ahead for season three. It's all tenuous and uncertain, as it usually is in show business, but for the first time Jared feels nothing but dread at the thought of the show ending. His usual hopeful outlook and sense of adventure have flown right out the window on the wings of Morgan's devastating prediction.

Jared can't imagine a future without Jensen in it. He definitely doesn't want to go there. 

"So what do I have to do to make sure that doesn't happen?" he asks finally. He sinks onto the bed next to Jensen, lays a hand gently on one blanket-covered leg. Jensen shifts slightly under his hand but doesn't wake, and Jared feels tears sting the backs of his eyes.

"Yeah, that part's a little iffy," Morgan screws his face up, like he's chewing on something sour. "I've got an idea, and I think it will work, but it's no guarantee. I can see the future that's likely right now, but if you follow my plan, things will change. I can't see how that future will work out from here."

"What do I have to do?" Jared repeats, gritting his teeth.

"You have to kill yourself," Morgan says, and Jared's head snaps up so fast he almost gets whiplash.

"What?"

"Yeah, well, it's more like you have to convince Jensen that you _would_ kill yourself," Morgan says. "You have to show him you're willing to sacrifice everything, even your life, to keep him with you."

"That's – that's just stupid!" Jared exclaims, jumping to his feet because he can't sit anymore. "Are you serious? That's the most manipulative bullshit I could possibly pull on somebody, let alone the person I love most in the world! No way would I do that to him. Are you insane?"

"You don't actually have to go through with it," Morgan says. "You just have to make Jensen believe that your sacrifice equals his."

"I don't have to try to make him believe anything," Jared insists. "I would give everything for him."

"Then show him," Morgan says. "Make him believe that."

"By trying to kill myself?" Jared throws his arms up and shakes his head.

"No, no, no," Morgan soothes.

Jared realizes he's gone from distrust and jealousy to actually buying what the man – make that _angel_ – is selling. And how did his life suddenly start to imitate his art again? Not that there are angels on _Supernatural,_ thank God. That would be really over-the-top. 

"Jensen needs to shake loose from his guilt over what he thinks he did to you, and this is the way to do that. You have to make him see that leaving you is worse than what he did to you in that other timeline. So you show him what it means. You make him see what it would feel like if _you_ left _him._ I know it seems a little extreme..."

"A little!" Jared's pacing the floor now, utterly overwhelmed. "Morgan, I am not guilting Jensen into staying with me, and that's the end of it."

Morgan shakes his head, smiling for the first time since he appeared in the room, and Jared notices his dimples, notices the physical similarity between them that might have factored into the casting decision that gave this doppelgänger's human counterpart the role of John Winchester.

Jared can almost see what Jensen sees when he looks at Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Dude's attractive as sin, for God's sake. He's just Jensen's type.

"I don't think it will come to that," the angel says quietly. "I think all you need to do is give him a little reminder. He doesn't remember most of his other life. At least, not consciously. When he was a toddler, he started speaking in tongues, claimed he could hear angels, and his parents tried to fix him. They filled him full of drugs, therapy, every cure money could buy. Jensen was a freak, despised by his classmates, feared by their parents. Therapy taught him to forget who he was, to ignore the voices in his head. But he remembered you."

"Me?" Jared's horrified by what he's hearing; Jensen never let on about any of this, and it sounds truly sickening. Jensen's childhood was deeply traumatic, and this is the first Jared's heard about it, or at least about the details.

"He has actual memories of that other timeline," Morgan confirms. "He's just buried them under years of therapy and feelings of inadequacy. How do you think he plays Dean so convincingly? He's had a similarly traumatic childhood, built a similar sense of himself as not good enough. Underneath his calm, steady demeanor, Jensen feels like a fuckin' failure."

"Jesus," Jared breathes. "What the hell happened in that other time-line?"

Morgan shakes his head. "Like I said, it's better for you not to know. But if you do exactly as I say, you'll have a chance to fix it."

"By killing myself," Jared clarifies.

"It won't come to that, I promise," Morgan assures him. "Now I need you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you. I can't stay much longer, and I won't be back, so this is your only chance to get this right."

Jared shakes his head. "Why are you even doing this?" he asks. "What's in it for you?"

"I love him," Morgan shrugs. "I want him to be happy. Plus, I was his boss and I fucked up because I didn't know his soul and yours were already mated. It's my fault he left you in the first place. If I'd known what I know now, I would have challenged Heaven itself to keep you together. As it was, I let him think he'd messed up by falling in love with you. I let him think he'd screwed up and wrecked your life. That's on me, so now I'm trying to fix it. And that's the last time you'll hear me apologize."

"Sounds like Heaven's got more to answer for than you have," Jared comments. "Seems to me your bosses are the ones who fucked up."

Morgan takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. "Yeah, I wish it was the first time," he says. "I think I need to look for a new job." 

After Morgan gives his instructions, Jared grows unexpectedly tired, as if the weight of Morgan's words were being imbedded into his bones. At Morgan's command, he climbs into bed with Jensen and pulls the blankets over them both.

"He doesn't remember you, does he?" Jared asks as he fights the overwhelming weariness, the urge to close his eyes.

"No," Morgan agrees. "It's easier that way. And you probably shouldn't tell him about our little conversation, at least for now." Morgan crosses to the bed and lays gentle fingertips on Jared's forehead. "Sleep now, Jared. Don't forget what I told you."

Jared's asleep before he has another coherent thought.

**//**//**

He wakes up to Jensen practically on top of him, stubbled chin digging into his shoulder as he presses his face into Jared's neck, nibbling and kissing and breathing him in as he ruts against Jared's morning wood.

"Jesus, Jensen," Jared breathes, reaching down to grab Jensen's ass and pull him in tighter against Jared's erection as he thrusts up.

Jensen growls into Jared's neck, nibbling on his earlobe as he pushes Jared's head to the side, giving himself better access to Jared's throat. "God, you smell so good, Jay. You taste like heaven."

Jared freezes, eyes flying wide as memories of last night flood his mind.

"Oh fuck," he breathes as Jensen runs his tongue along the shell of Jared's ear, then sucks Jared's earlobe into his warm, wet mouth and moans wantonly.

Jared gathers Jensen against him, one arm across his back, the other grasping his thigh. Then he surges up and rolls them over, so that Jensen lies under him, blinking up at Jared with a lazy grin. Jensen's lips are swollen and damp, his cheeks are flushed; he's a glorious, sleepy mess with his hair sticking up and his eyelashes crusted with tears and sleep.

"Jared? You okay?" Jensen thrusts up at just the right angle and Jared gasps, gets with the program again. He scoots down the bed, rucking up Jensen's tee-shirt as he goes so he can place long, hot kisses across Jensen's chest and belly. In one swift movement he frees Jensen's swollen dick from his boxers and takes it into his mouth, relishing Jensen's gasp and the little tug on his hair as Jensen grabs on almost reflexively.

"Fuck, Jared, your mouth. Oh God, you're such a fuckin' wet-dream! Woke up so hard for you," Jensen gasps as he thrusts up into Jared's mouth.

Jared concentrates on giving the best blow-job he's ever given, and when Jensen comes it's with a long, low, growling moan that makes Jared's dick leak. Jared swallows every drop, then kneels up between Jensen's spread legs and jacks himself furiously to the sight of Jensen all blissed out and debauched. Jensen's tee-shirt is shoved up under his armpits and his chest is as flushed as his cheeks, nipples hard and peaked, his thick muscled arms lying loose on the bed. Jared can see the tender underside of Jensen's elbow and he imagines putting his tongue there and that's all it takes. He's coming all over Jensen's chest and belly, and when a drop hits Jensen's chin Jared leans down and licks it up. Jensen turns his head a little and Jared kisses him, filthy and deep and thorough, morning-breath and come be damned.

"You know I'll never leave you, right?" Jared breathes when he comes up for air.

Jensen blinks, groggy and still blissed-out. "Yeah, I know," he mutters, running his tongue along his lip like he's tasting Jared, and himself, which he probably is. "What?"

Jared's shaking his head, backing off the bed. He comes back with a wet washcloth and cleans Jensen up, then crawls back into bed beside him.

"You had a pretty crazy dream last night," Jared murmurs as he trails his fingers up Jensen's arm, rubs his thumb over the tender underside of Jensen's elbow. Jensen turns his arm so Jared has better access. He knows what Jared likes.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you were flailing around, hit me a couple of times," Jared says. "You were crying, calling my name, so I woke you up. But you weren't really awake. You were totally disoriented. Asked me what year it was."

Jensen's eyes are still closed, but Jared can see the little crease between them as he frowns.

"You were speaking some ancient language," Jared continues. "Before I woke you up. Nothing I've ever heard before, although it sounded a little like Latin."

"It's Enochian," Jensen swallows, then turns his head and opens his eyes, and it almost takes Jared's breath away.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but Jensen's soul isn't completely human, and now that Jared knows that it's almost more than he can bear. There's an alien intelligence in those clear green orbs, ageless understanding and wisdom accumulated from lifetimes of experience, and it almost scares Jared because he's been looking into Jensen's eyes for almost two years now and it still shatters him. Still takes him apart and makes him feel alive and loved and important in ways he never knew he needed.

Only now he knows it's not all normal and natural. It's not ordinary at all.

He's always known that, in his heart. He's always known Jensen was special.

"Enochian, huh?" Jared frowns at the unfamiliar word.

"It's what angels speak," Jensen explains. "Or at least that's what I was told when I was a kid. It was my first language. My parents found a linguist who figured out what it was. I wouldn't speak anything else for the first four years of my life, although I understood English just fine."

"Wow," Jared sucks in a breath. "That must have been hard for you."

"I thought I was an angel, sent to Earth to fix things," Jensen says, and his voice has a bitter edge to it now. "My parents were pretty freaked."

"I'll bet," Jared murmurs sympathetically. "Any idea what you were sent to fix?"

Jensen frowns, shutting down so fast it makes Jared's head spin. He rolls over, almost tumbles off the bed in his effort to get away from Jared suddenly, or so it seems. "It was a kind of childhood psychosis, Jared," he growls, pulling his tee-shirt down and his shorts up as he gets off the bed. "I was a kid. None of it was real."

Jared's mouth drops open, prepared with an apology. It's obviously a sore topic for Jensen, and Jared feels like a klutz for pushing him on it.

"Never mind," Jensen seems to realize he's being harsh. He turns at the bathroom door to offer Jared a rueful smile. "We're going to be late for work if we don't hustle. I call first shower."

"Go for it," Jared lies back on the bed as Jensen disappears into the bathroom. He needs to get his head on straight about this, about all the things Morgan told him last night.

He'd been half-hoping it was all a dream, that Morgan hadn't really been here at all and none of what he told Jared was true.

Now he knows that's not right. Now Jensen's confessed his fucked-up childhood and Jared knows what he has to do.

**//**//**

The next week is spent filming the two-part season finale, and by the end of it Jensen and Jared are both exhausted. Jensen withdrew to his trailer more than once, overcome by emotion as Dean holds Sam's lifeless body in his arms. It seems to trigger some deep fear in Jensen that makes him almost hysterical with grief.

Jared does his best to try to lighten the moment, to help Jensen regain the control he needs to finish the scene, but it's nearly impossible. They're actors, and intellectually they both know they're just acting, but it obviously feels more real to Jensen than he's willing to admit. At one point Jared suggests they extend the scene, just let it continue beyond the point where Bob calls "Cut!"

It helps. Jensen holds Jared's body and cries, wrenching, full-bodied sobs that go on and on while Jared stays still and lifeless, a literal dead weight in Jensen's arms for as long as he needs. Eventually Jim Beaver comes back, and together they pick Jared up, carry him across the soundstage to the interior set where they lay him on a bed. Then they all take a break before they come back to film Dean's emotional testimonial to his own failure.

It's almost more than Jared can take, knowing what he knows now about Jensen's past. But he's a professional, they both are, and they get through it.

After the wrap party, Jared suggests they take a road-trip.

"Just the two of us," he coaxes. "Down to L.A. by car this time."

Jared knows he's catching Jensen at a vulnerable time, knows he's being just a tiny bit manipulative. They're getting ready for bed after the party, and they're both so tired they can hardly stand up.

Jensen's already in his soft flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else, and he looks so fragile, despite his bulk and muscle, that it makes Jared's heart hurt.

Nevertheless, Jared expects him to protest, to start arguing that they need time away from each other like he did last summer. So Jared's taken completely aback when Jensen lifts his big tide-water eyes and says, "Okay."


	8. Chapter 8

The drive down scenic coastal Highway 101 is really gorgeous. They ramble, taking their time, stopping at diners and roadside cafés as the mood strikes them, pulling off the highway to enjoy the view of the Pacific Ocean whenever they need to. Jared finds them little cottages and out-of-the-way motels to spend the night, and they take their time getting up and going again in the morning. They explore tide pools and prehistoric-looking public beaches during the day, watch the sunset together perched on a pile of driftwood, make out to the sound of the waves hitting the shore and with the smell of the sea in their hair.

In this way it takes them four days to reach the Oregon-California border. From there it's another two-day drive with plenty of stops to San Luis Obispo, where Morgan's directions take them off the highway and into Los Padres National Forest. The drive along Cuesta Ridge is treacherous and winding, and by the time they reach the steel truss bridge over the deep ravine Jared's heart's pounding and his hands are clammy with sweat from holding the wheel steady against the powerful wind that could clearly sweep them off the edge of the canyon.

Jensen thinks he knows where they're going; they filmed the pilot not far from here, on a different steel truss bridge over a different creek.

"This one was closed last year for repairs," Jared explains when he corrects Jensen's assumption. "The view is really spectacular. I think you'll like it."

When they reach the bridge, the "Danger: Bridge Closed" sign is still there, but it's been pushed to the side of the road. Jared stops the car anyway, pulling over onto the shoulder just before the bridge.

"We're going to walk?" Jensen raises one eyebrow skeptically. It's not cold, but it's windy here, and it's getting dark. Not the best time to walk across an old bridge.

"It's worth it," Jared assures him, and Jensen gives a small shrug.

_It's now or never,_ Jared thinks, his heart pounding into his throat as he walks quickly toward the bridge, not waiting to be sure Jensen's following.

"Jared? Hey, wait up!"

Jared walks purposefully to the center of the bridge, then climbs over the guardrail to stand at the edge of the pedestrian walkway, right against the railing, looking down. It's a sheer drop to a dark, rocky bottom, just as Morgan had promised. There'd be very little chance of surviving such a fall. All he can do now is hope Morgan was right about this.

"Jared?" Jensen's voice is concerned, but there's no recognition yet. He doesn't seem to know this place.

_Show time._

Carefully but very deliberately, Jared climbs up and over the railing, holding tight in the strong wind till he's on the other side, balancing precariously on the ledge. He can't turn around yet; his heart's beating too hard and he doesn't trust his clammy hands enough to break the hold he has on the railing.

He's definitely got Jensen's attention now.

"Jay, what the hell are you doing?"

'Don't come any closer!" Jared demands sharply. "I need you to remember, Jensen. Please. You've been here before." 

Jensen stops dead in his tracks, mouth agape, perfect lips forming a perfect "oh". But still not an "oh" of recognition or understanding. Just confusion, concern, the glimmerings of fear.

"Okay, this isn't funny," Jensen says. "Come down from there, Jay. Come down and tell me what's going on."

"You're worried, aren't you?" Jared taunts, pushing himself to challenge Jensen, to force him to face what's happening. "There's a little doubt in your mind right now about what I might do. You know me, but you're worried. Admit it!"

Jensen huffs out a breath, shakes his head like he's sure this is a joke. He tries to smile, like he's determined to laugh this off, but it falls flat. He's too invested. Jared can see it. Jensen might be a good actor, but this is Jared. Jensen is programmed to respond to Jared, and he can tell when Jared's making a joke.

This is not one of those times.

"I don't understand," Jensen says. "Why are you doing this?"

"You sacrificed everything for me, once," Jared yells against the rising wind. His hair flies around his face, gets in his eyes. "I need you to see that I would do the same for you. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, Jensen, You hear me? Nothing I wouldn't give up."

Jensen takes another step, keeping his eyes locked on Jared. He's struggling to control the freak-out that's bubbling up under his usual calm. It's in the way he moves; Jared can tell.

"Okay, I don't know what you think you're doing, but come down from there so we can talk about it, okay?" Jensen's taking this seriously now, at least. Jared can see his mind working, can almost hear him thinking Jared's lost it, thinking maybe the stress of the job has been too much.

"Please remember, Jensen," Jared calls. His hands are trembling. "I can't hold on much longer."

Jensen takes another step, puts his hand up like he's planning to leap forward and grab Jared if he has to. He's only a couple of feet away now, and Jared can see disbelief and panic in his eyes. There's real fear there, and Jared feels a pang of guilt for putting Jensen through this, a moment of doubt that maybe it won't work and Jared's just being an asshole.

Then Jensen glances past Jared, at the deep drop behind him, and Jared can see the moment Jensen remembers. Jensen's eyes widen and his lips part almost comically; his eyes dart back and forth as memories flood to the fore. Then he raises his eyes to Jared again and there's a film of tears over them, the light of recognition Jared had hoped for.

"Jared," Jensen breathes, and Jared nods frantically.

"Yeah, that's right," he gasps. "It's me. It's really me. You saved me, remember? I want to do the same for you."

It's a wild guess, but he can see he's hit the nail on the head. The lines are familiar to them from the last episode, the season finale in which Sam promises to find a way to save Dean from going to Hell.

'What are you – what are you talking about?" Jensen hesitates, overwhelmed with memories that don't make sense to him, and Jared can see he's really struggling. Jensen takes a step forward, looking wildly around him, like he's seeing the bridge for the first time, like he's remembering vividly the last time he was here and it terrifies him.

"You were an angel, Jensen," Jared goes for broke. "You were a real honest-to-God angel in that other life. You gave up everything to become human. You gave it all up for me."

"What? That can't be right," Jensen stares at him.

"I know it sounds crazy," Jared nods. "It sounded nuts when I first heard it, too. But it's true, Jen. You know it in your bones, same as me. Something happened here, in that other life. That's why I brought you here. So you would remember."

Jensen shakes his head, blinking away tears. "That wasn't real," he insists, but it's like he's trying to convince himself now, not like he really believes that. "They made me take medicine to make me stop dreaming. I had years of therapy. I became an actor because I needed to prove to myself I could separate fantasy from reality. None of that was real!"

Jensen takes another step and stumbles, and Jared doesn't hesitate, just leaps over the rail and grabs onto Jensen before he falls, before he collapses on the bridge as his legs give way beneath him.

"Hey, hey," Jared soothes as Jensen sinks to his knees, and Jared goes with him, supporting Jensen's weight against his body. "It's okay. It's okay. You're okay. I got you."

He babbles as Jensen trembles, clutching Jared's body like a lifeline, holding him tight as they kneel on the cold concrete, wind whipping and howling around them, water rushing over the rocks below.

"It can't be true," Jensen gasps as Jared rubs his back. "How can all of that be real? How is it even possible?"

"Shhh, shhhh," Jared soothes, mumbling and babbling into Jensen's ear, waiting patiently for Jensen to process the revelation, to make sense of a lifetime of memories and dreams he's worked all his life to suppress. "It just is, Jen. It just is."

"No," Jensen pulls back suddenly. His eyes are wild and red-rimmed, his face streaked with tears. "No, Jared. I fucked up. I was supposed to take care of you. That was my job! You were my charge, and I was supposed to make sure nothing bad happened to you, and I fucked up!"

He surges to his feet so fast Jared sprawls backwards, stares up at Jensen in shock.

"What? No, you didn't," Jared protests, scrambling to his feet and taking a step toward Jensen, who immediately takes a step back, shaking his head.

"No, no, I'm poison, Jared," he chokes out. "I cursed you. I never should have been in your life in the first place, and now I'm fucking it up again..."

"No! No, you're not! Listen to me, Jensen, that's wrong! The fact is, we're soul-mates or some shit. We're supposed to be together! When you left, when you and I weren't together anymore, that's when the bad stuff happened. You leaving me is what fucks things up! Our souls are joined, so if you try to separate us, everything goes to hell. See? It's not being together that's bad. It's being apart!"

Jensen shakes his head. "No," he protests. "No, Jay, that can't be right. I don't have a soul. I mean, angels don't have them. So that can't be right..."

"You're special, Jen," Jared takes another step, carefully, and Jensen doesn't back away this time, lets him almost enter his personal space. "You have a soul, even as an angel, because you and I are bound. We're equal. We're meant to be. The universe is lined up to bring us together, over and over, until we get it right. You know, like destiny."

Jensen frowns, but Jared can see he's gotten through to him. He can see Jensen's taking in what Jared's saying. It seems to Jared that Jensen wants to believe what Jared is telling him is true. It's as if a part of Jensen is tuned to a truth-channel, and he recognizes it when he hears it, and he's just heard it but he's not quite ready to believe it.

Jensen lifts a hand, effectively ensuring Jared doesn't close the gap between them, as Jared is sorely tempted to do. "How – how the hell do you know all this, Jay? How did you know to bring me here?" The question is simple, but it's the one Jared is most reluctant to answer. Nevertheless, it has to be said.

"An angel told me," he says quietly.

"An angel," Jensen repeats, but he can't really muster the look of skepticism that he was obviously going for.

"Yeah," Jared takes a deep breath. "He looked just like Jeff Morgan and he said he was your boss, in that other time-line. He also said you probably wouldn't remember him. I think it's something to do with the fact that he wasn't supposed to be here. He was breaking some kind of rule. He said you would understand."

Jensen frowns, like he's wracking his brain for a memory of his former boss, but it's just not there. "So he was the one who told you about us being twin souls," Jensen suggests, and Jared nods.

"He felt responsible for what happened in that other time-line," Jared says. "He said it was his job to fix it." _He said he was doing it because he loves you,_ Jared can't quite bring himself to add. He still feels twinges of jealousy when he thinks about Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and even if his angel doppelgänger doesn't even exist in this reality, it doesn't make Jared feel any less threatened.

Jensen nods, like this information fills some kind of blank in his understanding, like it all makes perfect sense now.

"So this angel – he knew your heart," Jensen suggests, his voice soft and rumbling.

"I guess," Jared shifts uncomfortably. "He knew this was the only way to make you believe me. I had to show you I was willing to give it all up."

"Why would you do that, Jared?"

"You gave up Heaven for me, Jensen. It's only fair that I should make a similar sacrifice for you."

"You would do that?" Jensen gazes at him with open wonder, his eyes filming over with tears again. "You would give it up? All this? Your success? All the fame, the money, the famous friends with their fancy houses, the expensive vacations..."

"You gave up Heaven for me," Jared repeats.

"Your watch collection," Jensen goes on. "All the fine wine we drink...The fans who think you're like God or something...The trailer gym that follows you around so you can work out wherever you are..."

Jared steps in, puts one hand on Jensen's shoulder, and presses two fingers of his other hand against Jensen's lips.

"None of it matters," Jared assures him. "I'd give it up in a heartbeat, if I could just have you."

"You've already got me," Jensen mumbles against Jared's fingers.

Jared slides the fingers under Jensen's chin, tips it up and angles in for a kiss, just a soft press of lips.

"Then I'm keeping you," Jared murmurs between kisses. "You're mine. No more do-overs."

When he glances up over Jensen's shoulder, Jared thinks he sees the shadow of a man standing at the other end of the bridge, the collar of his long black coat pulled up around his neck like the tips of two perfectly-shaped wings.

**//**//**

Before filming is half-way done for season 3, Jared and Jensen learn about the major change upcoming in the season 4 opener.

"Figures," Jensen mutters under his breath as they leave the studio office, and Jared takes a deep breath, lets it out slow as he slips his hand into Jensen's and laces their fingers together.

They're professionals. This is their job, and they both know they're damn lucky to have it. Demons, angels, probably God down the line, although Kripke has promised he'll never go _that_ far. Whatever this show throws at them, however weirdly it parallels their real lives, it can't ever eclipse the central and most important part of their story.

It's about two guys, one a former angel, and the love they have for each other that somehow transcends time and space and everything in between. All the rest is just window-dressing.

Damn fine window-dressing, though. Jared's gotta admit, this life doesn't suck.

At all.


End file.
